Chuck VS The Greater Good
by Neale
Summary: AU. Been away from this space for a while doing other things, this is my concept for my next Chuck story. The 'greater good' excuse always frustrated me, so that's the theme for this. Won't be anything for anyone who likes the Buymorons or Captain Not So Awesome. Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend
1. Chapter 1

**Been playing over at Harrycon lately, but thought I'd come back and see whether anyone missed me in here. ;^)**

 **The 'greater good' excuse always infuriated me, so I thought I'd make that the underlying theme for this one. Strangely enough, Chuck hates it as much as I do here. This is AU of course!  
**

 **NB: There are a couple of rough paragraphs at the end.**

 **Usual disclaimers, _please read_ , no rights to any characters portrayed and _this is neither the real world nor_ a Disney Princess tale.**

Mid-December 1999 – Somewhere in the Middle East

The team stayed as far away from Mowgli as they could in the C17's cargo bay, because they knew how dangerous he could be and most of them had never seen him this angry before. The young man in question was pacing like a caged tiger looking for something to rend limb from limb as an angry dialogue raged through his head.

'Greater Fucking Good? She's my _Aunt_ for fuck's sake and she's still trying to pull that card to make me do the things I'm unwilling to do? No wonder Mom ran away from that fucked up family when she was fourteen!'

He stopped to draw a breath as he grimaced. 'Not that that did her much good! She took off on that mad Russian's yacht, looking for adventure, and she sure as hell got _that_! Getting herself picked up by the KGB at fifteen and made to choose between passed around the SPETSNAZ barracks until she was dead, or become an operative for them, not much of a fuckin' choice there!' He shook his head. 'And then she gets selected to be sent back to the good old U S of A as a sleeper before she was seventeen? You couldn't write this shit!' He knew that Mom was a perfect mimic and wouldn't have had any trouble outsmarting just about anyone, even as a teenager, but convincing the KGB that she was Tatyana Leonova from Leningrad when they took her in after they caught her stealing from senior party members, being trained to be one of their most capable operatives and selected to serve as a high importance sleeper when she was still sixteen? 'For fuck's sake! Then they got her into Georgetown University, where she of course shone, as Mary Conrad and made sure she was recruited by the CIA while she was there.'

Another thought made him snort. 'I'd have loved to have been there to see the DCS's up and coming star Lieutenant Beckman's face the first time she ran into her big sister as the CIA's Agent Frost out in the field in the mid seventies! Auntie Di probably spat out that stick she normally has stuck up her arse when she realised who she was!' He was getting off the spiral and starting to calm down by then and had to concede that Auntie Di had come through for him and Ellie when Dad went off the rails after Mom got set up by the CIA and sent _back_ to Russia when he was nine, even if she did make use of the skills and abilities that they'd inherited from Mom and Dad rather liberally.

The others relaxed a little as they saw Mowgli calming down, and when Baloo went over to talk to him they thought the danger was past. Mowgli looked up when the jump light lit up to say that they were closing on the drop zone and barked at them to gather around. "The parameters for this mission are changing…."

Baloo cut in. "The Colonel's orders…." but Mowgli cut him off. "Who is command of this mission?" Baloo glared at him and growled. "You are Sir." Mowgli nodded curtly. "Don't forget that again! Right, as I said, the parameters are changing for the mission, new intel shows that there is a significantly higher number of civilians at the target site than was previously believed, so we aren't going to stand back and blow the site up. Any Combatants are to be engaged and taken out, but squads one and two will be coming in with me when I breach the target site here. We'll extract any relevant intel and blow their systems, records and armoury, then we can get the hell out of there, hopefully with minimal collateral damage." He looked around. "Any questions?"

No-one but Baloo would even think about arguing with Mowgli, he might look like a kid but he could easily handle any two of them and they knew that he'd earned the rank and medals that some of them had seen, because they'd all been on some of the missions where he had done so, so aside from a few questions as to details, they trusted him to achieve the mission objectives and get them out OK, like he always did. As they jumped though, more than a few of them were laughing, as only Mowgli could remap the entire mission on the fly between the warning and the drop signal.

As usual, the mission went off just as Mowgli said that it would, even with the last minute change, and they got out with serious intel and two high ranking prisoners that they wouldn't have had if they'd just blown up the facility as per their original orders. Of course, that was ignored when Mowgli and Baloo were being screamed at in the office of Colonel Diane Beckman when they returned to Fort Meade.

After twenty minutes of this, the young man cut her off. "Excuse me Ma'am, but I've got an exam in Palo Alto this afternoon, may we be excused so that I can get back in time for that, please?"

His Aunt screamed and spat out. "You're getting more like your mother every day!" He just shrugged and she came around the desk in tears to hug him. "I swear you took ten years off my life when I heard what you did!" She sniffed back the tears and went on. "There's an F-15E waiting on the tarmac at Andrews and the flight plan and refuelling arrangements are in place. You both have your Air Force IDs and flight suits?" They just nodded, so she hugged him again and indicated that it was time to leave. The look she gave the older, larger man known as Baloo however promised that they'd be having a different discussion when her nephew wasn't in earshot and he tried to repress a shudder, because everyone in that damned family was dangerous. He was just glad that there wasn't more than the two sisters, the kid and his sister, he didn't think the country could handle any more, hell the world couldn't handle more.

At Andrews AFB, the guard at the gate had waved them through before he realised that that Major Conrad had actually looked like a kid, but he shrugged to himself, the two pilots were in a senior Air Force Colonel's limo, with Colonel Beckman's staff, so if there was something wrong with the guy they would have picked it up.

Once they'd done the walk around on the F-15, they climbed in, with Major Coburn taking the driver's seat, and the speed with which they ran through the check lists without missing or shorting any of the steps drew appreciative nods from the ground crew, as usual these pilots knew how to get a jet in the air quickly and efficiently.

When they were up to altitude and speed, Casey told Chuck to try and get some rest so he would be ready for his exam when they got back. Chuck agreed and Casey snickered as he turned off the intercom ten minutes later so he didn't have to listen to his snoring. They landed at Travis AFB and transferred directly to the heli that took them straight to the Stanford University Hospital Heliport, so they had plenty of time to get back to the apartment, lock away their credentials, weapons and equipment and get cleaned up before Chuck's exam.

Mid-December 1999 – Palo Alto

The guy who headed out for his exam looked normal enough, a tall, lanky kid with curly brown hair and a goofy grin. Charles (Chuck) Bartowski, was a scholarship student who usually lived off campus with two friends of his dead parents and helped them out with their business, so he was always disappearing with them on jobs. No-one ever went there or questioned this because his 'Uncle John' was a big scary dude who's demeanour screamed ex-military, and that discouraged anyone from getting too close.

The ones who were closer to Chuck knew that he had a sister, Ellie, back in L.A. who was studying to be a doctor, but that was as much as anyone knew. Any questions about what happened to their parents made Chuck shut down, so most people just presumed that they'd been killed in gang violence or something like that in L.A. and quickly changed the subject. There were a few who kept prodding though, and one of the worst was Chuck's official room mate and self proclaimed best buddy Bryce Larkin. Larkin was a trust fund jock from back east, and no-one could work out why he kept pushing so hard to hang out with a scholarship kid like Chuck who didn't appear to be interested, even going so far as to set him Chuck up with a friend of his, Jill Roberts.

Of course what most people didn't know was that the family had investigated both Larkin and Roberts thoroughly and knew that they'd been selected by the CIA's recruiter at Stanford in their sophomore year, Larkin had been accepted into the program but Roberts supposedly didn't make the cut. What Chuck and Casey couldn't work out was why Roberts hadn't given up on the girlfriend thing when she was dropped from the CIA's program. Strangely enough, Casey was the one who was more inclined to go along with Jeff's suggestion that Roberts might have actually fallen for Chuck and that's why she stayed, while Chuck was still sure that there was some agenda behind her actions. Of course, Chuck had been subjected to his father's ever crazier conspiracy theories until he was eleven, so distrusting anything to do with the government was pretty much ingrained, and what he'd done for Auntie Di since then hadn't done anything to dispel that. At least having Roberts after him for sex all the time meant that he didn't need to go out partying for stress relief when things got a bit much for him, so the so-called relationship wasn't a total loss.

* * *

Coming back from the exam, Chuck got changed and got down to work, because while he and Casey had been off for a couple of days on that mission, they'd only had Jeff there to work on their analyst and tech workload and dear old Auntie Di didn't stop sending work just because they were off on a mission, oh no. The fact that Auntie Di was well aware that Chuck and Ellie had inherited the same family trait as she and Mary had of needing very little sleep meant that she had no compunctions about giving them enough work to fill the extra hours.

They did have another team down in L.A. but Ellie's workload at UCLA medical school and Caltech was heavier than Chuck's was and the CIA had Uncle Bry off on missions rather more than the DCS & NSA had Casey away, so Auntie Em was handling much of the workload there and as neither she nor Ellie had the same technical focus, all the technical jobs tended to come to Palo Alto unless Chuck's father was lucid enough in D.C. to take some of them on.

The fact that USN Lieutenant Commander Charles Carmichael and USAF Major Carol Conrad were joint commanders of the Joint Defense task force that was responsible for Y2K issues for all of the Defense Department's critical and security related systems just added to the fun, because Commander Carmichael and Major Conrad were, of course, two of the four military identities (USN Lieutenant Charles Carmichael, USAF 1st Lieutenant Carol Conrad, USA 1st Lieutenant Philip Bowman and USMC 1st Lieutenant Stefan Danko) that had been created for Chuck in 1993 when Auntie Di Created the special DIA and DCS groups to make use of Emma, Ellie and Charlie's talents.

Three elements had made the Y2K job a nightmare. The first was the fact that the line that was supposed to put everyone at ease in the initial teleconference. "I'm looking for this to be done and dusted within six months, because all the internally developed systems will have followed the guidelines and used four digit year codes, so we only have to check the externally sourced software." was met with a horrified silence, and when he growled "If anyone knows of internally developed systems which don't follow the guidelines and are using two digit year codes, they better speak up _now_!" what hesitantly came out was that most of the systems that they knew of actually used two digit year codes because it was simpler, so he had to double the size of the task force and get people checking and re-writing that part of the code on all the internal systems, as well as checking the externally sourced systems and getting the vendors to fix the damned code.

The second was only having Jeff in the know in the task force that was was spread across the country, so they had to be very careful dealing with everyone else, and the third was having to deal with a very talented hacker who went by the handle of the Lotus and who was piggy backing on the accesses to fix the problem to get into the systems and having fun playing around in the systems once she was inside. This led to another argument between Chuck and Auntie Di after Chuck had caught her because she was determined to put the girl (who was the wayward daughter of a Taiwanese diplomat) in prison, while Chuck was arguing that she hadn't done anything malicious or accessed classified information and she would be more value working for them than rotting in a cell somewhere.

Auntie Di was less than cordial when she reminded him that this was sounding a lot like the arguments that he'd used to keep the Piranha and Roscoe out of prison, and it didn't improve the situation when his reply was. "You were never going to throw me in prison, and haven't I been proven right about Jeff? You know I'm right about Miss Wu as well!" She wasn't about to admit that she knew he was right, and therefore she was bound to give in to him sooner or later, so she tried to stare him down. When that didn't work she sent him away and started people working on putting what he wanted together.

This became another thing to be sorted out over the Christmas break, because when Miss Wu was dragged to D.C. by Casey to be threatened by the Colonel Ironpants, she was given a choice, prison or unquestioning obedience to the head of her Cyber Security Group. If she chose the latter, she could continue going to Caltech but would be moving into their safe house in Arcadia with two of the team and working for Commander Carmichael from there. Needless to say, she'd be constantly monitored and if she ever spoke a word of this to anyone, she'd be in prison before she had a chance to spit.

Anna was under no illusions that the she had any options other than what she'd been told, and was rather worried that if she didn't chose the option that this scary little woman wanted her to, the scary _big_ dude who had brought her here would make sure that she disappeared. She looked from one to the other for a minute as she tried to work this out, the 'work for me' option sounded too crazy not to be the right one, so she looked the old bitch in the eye and said. "I'd like to work for Commander Carmichael Ma'am!" The Colonel nodded and went over all of the necessary details with her, had her processed and sent her back to California with Casey.

* * *

After the last exams for the Autumn Quarter were done, Chuck, Casey and Jeff headed down to the house in Arcadia for the Winter Break, Casey and Jeff in the Charlemagne Technical Services 'work' van and Chuck on his Harley. In previous years they'd headed across to D.C. so that Ellie and Chuck could have Christmas with their father, but it was at best 50/50 as to whether he'd be lucid enough to recognise them and it was almost guaranteed that he'd get upset and make a scene about the fact that their mother was stuck in Russia with Alexei Volkoff, so they gave up a couple of years ago. The fact that Roberts always went home for Christmas with her family took care of one of the dramas anyway.

Of course, it was different this year, as Anna Wu was being added to the family. When her exams were done she packed up and got ready to move out of the dorms. That scary dude turned up with another guy in a van and they took her and all of her stuff to the house where she was told she'd be living in one load. She greeted the other guy as Commander Carmichael, but he and the scary dude, Major Casey, just laughed and told her that she'd be meeting the Commander at the house.

At the house, she was introduced to a nice older couple, Emma LaBelle and Bryan Mills, and told to call them Emma and Bry. She was also introduced to a guy about her age and his older sister, Chuck and Ellie Bartowski. She'd seen them around Caltech and she asked Chuck if he'd been caught like she was, he just grinned and said. "Not exactly."

Anna didn't know what was going on and was starting to get worried, so she almost begged him to tell her, asking. "Chuck, do you know where this Commander Carmichael is? I've got to report to him! What's he like, he's not like that old bitch that I had to see in Washington is he?"

Chuck burst out laughing. "Anna, relax! You've already reported to Commander Carmichael, and no, he isn't much like Colonel Beckman."

Anna just looked confused, so he held out his hand. "Good to have you on board Lieutenant Wu, I am your commander, Lieutenant Commander Carmichael. You will normally report to Major LaBelle as I'm normally based up in Palo Alto."

Ellie burst out laughing at Anna's expression. "Chuck, that was cruel! Anna, as cruel as he's being, everything that Chuck just said was correct. It's normally just me and Auntie Em here, well and you now, and Auntie Em runs things. Before you say too many things about Colonel Beckman, I should warn you, she's actually Chuck and my Aunt, but yes, she can be a bitch when she wants to be."

When Anna had come down from her panic attack after she heard that that scary bitch in Washington was the Aunt of the cute guy who now controlled her future and the girl she would be sharing a house with, they explained that up until now the Cyber Group had consisted of Chuck and Jeff, and as Chuck said, they were normally up in Palo Alto with Casey. When Bry was between missions, he lived at the house as well. Chuck knocked Anna for a loop again when he told her that she probably knew him as the Piranha.

Ellie laughed at her awed expression and said that Jeff did that same thing when he joined after Chuck caught him, at Anna's confused expression she told her that Jeff had been the hacktivist called Roscoe until Chuck tracked him down and Casey arrested him.

Casey snorted and made a crack at Chuck. "I thought you wanted her because she's some sort of genius Bartowski, are you sure you got the right skirt?"

Watching the scary bastard become immediately contrite when he was chided by Emma for that comment was an interesting experience, and helped Anna settle down, which in turn made something else pop into her head. Turning to Chuck, she asked. "Commander Carmichael, why did you call me Lieutenant?"

"It's Chuck, Anna, I only use my rank when it's necessary…."

He was cut off by Casey muttering. "Yeah, or when you re-write the entire ops plan just before we're about to jump and pull rank to shut up anyone who questions it!"

Anna found that Chuck could be pretty scary when he snapped back at Casey. "Because experienced officers are supposed to know better than to question their commander when they only have a short time to brief the team before they're inserted, Major Casey!" Casey's apologetic nod and "Yes, Sir. Sorry Sir" was a surprise to Emma as well, as she'd never been on an operation like that with them, and hadn't seen Chuck in action, but Chuck was back to answering Anna.

"And your military identity has now been established, you're Air Force Second Lieutenant Anna Wu, attached to the Defense Intelligence Agency's Cyber Security Group."

Ellie tossed him the packet that she'd gone to retrieve when Anna asked about her title and Chuck caught it and handed it to Anna before continuing. "As we've said, the rest of the group is me, a Navy Commander, which equates to a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force, and Jeff, who's a Navy Lieutenant, who's the equivalent of an Air Force Captain….."

Emma cut him off. "Don't forget about Major Conrad and Lieutenant Daniels Chuck. Anna, providing that this Y2K business goes off OK, Chuck's Air Force co-commander for the Group will also be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel by the end of the first quarter next year."

Ellie looked from Emma to Chuck, and when it was obvious that neither of them was going to finish this, she decided that she would. "What _neither_ of them is apparently going to tell you Anna is that Chuck is also Major Conrad, as well as Major Bowman of the Army and Major Danko of the Marines. As Casey let slip before, we do other types of operations as well, and Chuck, Casey, Jeff, Uncle Bry, Auntie Em and myself all have multiple military identities for doing different operations."

Anna looked at Emma, instinctively knowing that she was the one who could be relied on, and was reassured by her nod.

* * *

While they were upset that Ellie and Chuck's mother was trapped in Russia with the CIA's psycho creation and their father was in D.C. but off the planet half the time, it was Auntie Em's daughter Sammie who they missed the most when they were together. Her father had run off with her when she was seven, and while she'd called whenever she could for a few years, they hadn't had the technology to trace the calls back then. Unfortunately they'd all had to go into hiding after Stephen (Ellie and Chuck's Dad) ran off in ninety three, so Sammie didn't have a number to call Emma on any more, and they'd lost touch with her.

Chuck and Emma had kept up the search for Sammie ever since, but it seemed that whenever they got a lead on her and her father, he'd change their identities and they'd disappear again. When that happened they had to start over from where they had disappeared. It was a frustrating and disheartening process, but Sammie meant more to Chuck (or rather Charlie, as he dropped back into Charlie whenever he thought of the girl he grew up with) than anyone except Ellie, and she meant everything to Auntie Em.

Sammie still sent letters to the mail drop that they'd set up in the early days to let her mother know that she was OK (or alive anyway), but Emma hadn't managed to talk to her little girl in six and a half years. Sammie's letters were how they found out that Joe, her father, had managed to get himself arrested again a year and a half ago, and she'd given enough hints for them to know that she'd been trapped into working for the CIA at the time. Chuck and Jeff had gone deeper into the CIA's systems and records than anyone else had ever managed before or since in their attempt to locate Sammie, they had access to things that only the top few in the CIA knew about, but with all of that, they couldn't find anything that pointed to Sammie. Later letters indicated that she'd gone to university, so they expanded their search to include the universities across the country, but they hadn't found anything that matched her there either.

It was only in the bunker in the house in Arcadia that they risked having evidence of their real lives on display, and the walls were plastered with medals, citations and pictures that most of the world wouldn't have believed were possible, like the citations that both Ellie and Chuck had received when they piloted the SR71 that Auntie Di had arranged as a twenty first present for Ellie by using the family's political and military connections back in February at well over Mach 3, records to show that they'd both successfully completed Special Forces and SEAL training and had participated in and performed well enough on missions to be officially accepted to wear the insignias. There were other certificates in Hebrew and Cyrillic that said that Chuck had also done the same with Israeli's top special forces units and the GRU's SPETSNAZ, and pictures that showed them in training and on missions to back all of this up. The medals and citations were for all of the 'family', so as well as Ellie and Chuck, Casey, Jeff, Emma, Bry, Diane, Stephen and Mary were represented.

These 'merit walls' tended to make the bunker feel more of a family room, so they normally worked down there when they were together for the holidays. The also used the secure communications there to have AV links with Mary and Stephen, and Auntie Di when she couldn't get away to come to L.A. to see her niece and nephew in person. They had thought that having a new member in the household this time would have limited how much time they spent in the bunker until they were sure of her, but the truth had come out when she first got there and they got enough of a read on her to decide that they could trust her, so on her first time in the bunker, they let Anna take the time to check them out and ask the inevitable questions.

* * *

While she was most interested in Chuck's section, she found the section under the birth certificate for Eleanor Mary Beckman quite interesting. It was obvious that this was Chuck and Ellie's mother, because it was it was next to the section for Diane Beckman, who Ellie had said was their Aunt, it was the large section in Cyrillic under the American birth certificate, with tags showing in English that it related to Tatyana Leonova from Leningrad and she was part of the KGB that confused Anna. Then there was another American birth certificate for Mary Conrad with her degrees from Georgetown, certificates to indicate that she was a full CIA Agent and had been awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Cross, the paperwork for her marriage to Stephen Philip Kowalski and the birth certificates for her children, Eleonora Mary Kowalski and Charles Philip Kowalski (both of whom were two years younger than Eleanor Faye Bartowski and Charles Irving Bartowski). Then, in 1990, the records for their mother stopped.

She was glancing at Ellie and Chuck, wanting to ask if she died but not thinking that she could when Ellie spoke up. "No, Mom isn't dead, she's in Russia. She was sent to Russia by the CIA to retrieve a very important target, but she was set up to be killed by the people Dad was working for as they saw her as an impediment to getting him to create what they wanted him to. What they didn't realise was that as far as the KGB was concerned, she was their sleeper who they'd sent here in the sixties to get embedded in the CIA and work her way up. The KGB vouched for her so she wasn't killed, but the one she was sent to retrieve had actually been turned into Alexei Volkoff, the psychopathic arms czar that he was supposed to be playing, and he demanded that she stay with him. The CIA people here made another play and sent details of her family to Volkoff in an attempt to prove she was playing him, but he still wouldn't kill her, he just held us over her head to make her stay, so that's where she's been stuck for the past eleven years, in Russia with a psychopath."

Anna looked uncertainly at the wall. "But how..."

"The sleeper?" Anna nodded. "From what she and Auntie Di told us, Mom was rather wild and ran away from home when she was fourteen. You've met Auntie Di so you should be able to work out what the family's like. There was a, well what served for a Russian playboy back then, the filthy rich and decadent young son of a highly ranked party member, here with a big fancy yacht at the time and Mom apparently went to him and… convinced him that he wanted her around, so he promised to take her to Europe with him. The problem was, word had gotten back to the party about what the playboy was getting up to and his father had been punished for his actions, so the yacht had been called straight back to Leningrad. Mom slipped away before she could get caught up in the mess that was waiting for the guy with the yacht and managed to get an identity created for her in the name of Tatyana Leonova. I guess I should point out here that Mom's a genius, Dad's the one who most people call a genius but Mom's right up there with him, so within a few months she was building a good life for herself. She decided that there would be better pickings in Moscow than in Leningrad so she headed down there, and she was doing really well, until she was captured stealing from senior party members and was taken to the KGB. The KGB were really impressed with what she'd accomplished and wanted her working for them, so they offered her a choice between being tossed to the animals in their SPETSNAZ Brigade to do whatever they wanted to her until she was dead, or become an operative of the KGB, it was an easy choice so she joined the KGB."

Ellie waved at Chuck's section of the wall. "Mom blitzed everyone in the training like Chuck did and her standing in the KGB shot up, so before she turned seventeen she had been selected to be inserted into America as a sleeper, getting into Georgetown as Mary Conrad and making sure that she caught the CIA's eye. The CIA took the bait and she repeated what she did in the KGB, quickly becoming their top operative. She made a name for herself in the intelligence community and ran into Auntie Di back when she was a DCS operative, so they reconnected. She also worked with Uncle Bry, who was one of the CIA's top SOG operatives and field agents, and Auntie Em, who was their top analyst. Then she was assigned to protect the CIA's most important asset, Dad. They fell in love, got married when she found out she was pregnant with me, and had the brat three and a half years after me, so that's the story how Eleanor Beckman became Mary Conrad, the KGB sleeper."

She looked at the wall and continued. "I may as well tell you about Dad while we're here. He was a tech genius at MIT and the government and big business were all courting him. He swallowed the CIA's spiel and came over here to set up his labs in a secret facility north of L.A. and get started on his projects. He was building whatever technology the CIA wanted, and the more he did, the more they demanded. Abut a year after I was born they brought up what they really wanted, the replacement for Project MKUltra mind control program, which they'd supposedly scrapped when they finally accepted that they couldn't do what they wanted with drugs. The CIA had already had someone trying to come up with a way to program the human brain to do what they wanted, but that had been a total failure, so they handed what they had over to Dad and told him to make it work. Dad's team managed to get what they'd been trying to do working, and it could theoretically imprint a different personality and memories onto a subject. Dad and Uncle Hartley wouldn't allow it to be tested until they were sure that the effects could be reversed, but in nineteen eighty they were confident enough for Uncle Hartley to demonstrate it, and for half an hour he became a very convincing Russian Mob boss, Mom said that his accent and mannerisms were perfect and he knew the subject matter like a native. At the end of the half hour, Uncle Hartley turned back into himself and asked whether it worked."

Ellie looked at Harry and they shook their heads at each other, but he waved to her to continue. "Unfortunately, the Director of the CIA had ordered the project stopped, so they couldn't present their findings, but the CIA boss of the project had seen Dad's notes on what other possibilities this technology could have, and insisted that he get that working. They called it Project Omaha, and Dad and the other team members were spending most of their time on it, but the problem was that none of the test subjects could handle it, anyone they tested it on ended up brain dead, or just dead. Dad refused to allow any other testing until they were confident that it was safe, and Graham, the guy running the project agreed, but he forced Dad to accept other people onto the team. When Charlie was eight, Mom and Dad found out that they'd been testing the Intersect, that was what Dad called it for some reason, on subjects behind Dad's back and Mom threatened to go to the Director of the CIA to get it stopped."

"Soon after that, some other Directors supposedly came to Graham with an urgent need to insert someone into the Russian arms trade. Graham somehow talked Uncle Hartley into being the subject again and Dad and Uncle Hartley worked on the program until they were confident that they had multiple triggers that would cause the program to terminate on demand, and if all else failed, it would automatically terminate after six months. Uncle Hartley loaded it to test it but they couldn't terminate it, and the personality had been corrupted so that he wasn't just arrogant and aggressive, he was a psychopath. They sedated him and Dad demanded that they call it off until they'd fixed Uncle Hartley. Graham refused, saying that it was an urgent requirement and there was too much at stake, they'd send someone in to retrieve him when the program terminated after six months. Six months later Mom went in to retrieve Uncle Hartley, but the program didn't terminate, and I told you what happened to her."

"Dad went off the rails after that, the plan to get rid of the roadblocks so he'd concentrate on the project had ruined him. Graham wouldn't release him from the Omaha project so Dad decided to do what he could to finish it so he would be free to go after Mom. He was obsessed, he ignored us and everything else to work on the Intersect all the time. About six months after Mom went back to Russia, Dad left his workroom at home open when he went off to get something and Charlie went in to see what was more interesting than him. He saw a blinking prompt on a stack of screens and hit enter out of spite. The problem was that it was the program that Dad was working on, and that activated it. When Dad got back, he found Charlie frozen solid, staring at the screen and he thought he'd destroyed him by leaving the door open, but all of a sudden Charlie came to and asked Dad why he was crying. Dad couldn't find anything wrong with Charlie and thought that that meant that that version was safe, so he came up with the crazy idea that if he loaded it into himself he could troubleshoot it and get it working that much quicker, so he did. The problem was that he was wrong, it only appeared to be safe for _Charlie_ , and it started effecting Dad just about straight away."

Ellie looked at Chuck again and he reached over to squeeze her hand, he knew that this was hard for her. She took a breath and continued. "Even though he could feel it effecting him, Dad still had the stupid idea that he could get it working properly, so he kept loading data into it and trying to use it, and he kept getting worse faster. After a year or so, he finally accepted that it would destroy him before he could get it working and he contacted Auntie Di to get her to promise to look after us, then he disappeared. Uncle Bry grabbed us and got us away from the house and Auntie Di and Auntie Em set up new lives for us, living with our Aunt in Arcadia after our parents had died. A bit after that, Auntie Di came up with the proposal for the three of us to work as analysts for her and when we agreed, set up the groups under her in the DIA. They tracked Dad down a couple of years later, he hadn't made any headway in fixing himself, but he had come up with a governor device that suppressed the Intersect activity, kept him lucid about half of the time and stopped, or at least slowed, the deterioration. Auntie Di used our family connections to get him placed with a top psychiatrist who's been working with him and keeping him a secret for the family's sake ever since."

Anna looked at her wide eyed for a while, wondering what she'd managed to get herself into, then remembered her manners and thanked Ellie for telling her their story. She hesitated, but waved to the pictures and citations for the flying and special operations missions, asking. "How did you get from being Analysts to all of this?"

That made Ellie smile as she looked at Bry. "Mom, and Uncle Bry. Mom was training us and Sammie..." she saw the stifled curiosity on Anna's face at the new name. "Sammie is Auntie Em's daughter, her father took her away when she was seven and we've been looking for her ever since, We know that the CIA has her now, but we haven't managed to find her yet. Anyway, Mom started training all of us when we were toddlers, running and tumbling, then little athletics and gymnastics, then martial arts and the other skills of agents. She'd progress us to the next level as soon as we could handle it so we progressed quickly. By the time Charlie started school he could take on two or more kids twice his size because he was trained and they weren't. Uncle Bry joined in the training when he was here, and Auntie Em taught us analysts' skills as soon as we could handle them too. We kept up the daily exercise and practice, but after we moved here to Arcadia and started school, we were giving up and staying at home so Uncle Bry picked up our training again."

"When he found out just how much natural aptitude we had for these things, he pulled some strings with buddies he trusted in the military and intelligence circles to get us more serious training and so did Auntie Di, the better we did, the more training we got." She waved a hand at the walls. "As you can see, we got a _lot_ of training, Uncle Bry organised for us to go on some so-called safe missions to build our confidence and we were requested for more after that, so we became regulars on special operations and intelligence missions. We did well, and we started getting promotions and medals, Auntie Di added Casey into the team to have our backs on missions, and after Chuck tracked Roscoe down and Casey nabbed him, Jeff was added to the team as well, and you have too now."

Anna looked a question at Bry and he nodded to confirm the story, so she looked around the team she was now part of, thinking. 'What have I gotten myself into?'

The armoury in the bunker was like a wet dream for Casey and any other special ops weapons fanatics, because it had the best special operations weaponry from around the world. Quite a bit was Russian and Israeli, but the best of the best from the rest of the world was there too and the focus was on function, not standardisation, so they had 9mm assault rifles, 10mm Auto pistols and sub-machineguns, large calibre sniper rifles, M32 grenade launchers and the like. Most would have been shocked by how familiar Chuck and his sister were with the contents of the armoury, and how effectively they could use it.

* * *

The person the family was missing didn't have any family to support her though, as she was spending her second Christmas break since she'd been grabbed by the CIA at 'The Farm', immersed in intensive training again. She cursed her stupid father every time she thought of him, because she wouldn't be here if he hadn't _yet again_ let his ego override his pathetic excuse for a brain! And she wished she'd killed that black bastard Graham the moment she saw him, if she had had any inkling of just how evil he was…. well she liked to think that she would have been able to override her beliefs that unnecessary killing was bad and done the right thing then…. They'd certainly tried to condition her out of _those_ beliefs over the past year and a half. She tried to tell herself that she didn't know how many people she'd killed in that time, but knew that every detail was in there, if she was brave enough to face up to it.

Sammie's core identity now was Sarah Lisa Walker, she didn't know whether Graham had been trying to be cruel or kind when he kept her real middle name for the identity. Her other two identities at Harvard also used versions of Sarah so that she wouldn't get caught out, responding to the wrong name. She was told that the records for the other names would be amended to Sarah Walker once the final exam results were in, so that all of her degrees would be issued in the name of Sarah Walker.

They had had to use the Jenny Burton name when she was first enrolled to make use of her education transcripts from her last highschool, but she certainly hadn't been sad to see the Burton name go, because it just brought back memories of why she was there. As soon as she'd been accepted into the system at Harvard they'd changed that into the three names being used for her three majors in the schools of business, law and languages. She would have laughed if she'd known that Charlie was currently completing degrees at Stanford, MIT and Caltech under three different names too. It was also a given that Sarah Walker would never be allowed to revert to her real age, because it was easier for the CIA to make use of her if she was supposedly of legal age, and it made her accomplishments easier to swallow to boot.

Sarah had actually enjoyed some of the extra training that she was put through, learning to fly helicopters, all sorts of small planes and transports, business jets and jet fighters, that was cool, as was learning to handle all sorts of performance cars and bikes and being trained by the CIA's SOG guys in what they did (it had gone well after the others saw what she did to the first couple of guys who thought that she should be giving them something for the privilege of that special training). Of course, there were other parts of her special training that turned her stomach, being taught to torture and mutilate targets to get information out of them as quickly as possible and being forced to learn all sorts of sexual acts gave her nightmares most nights. It was the sick anticipation on Graham's and her 'trainers' faces that haunted her nightmares even more than the acts themselves, and meant that she had to force the memories down far enough for her conscious mind at least to forget about them, to allow her to continue to function.

Sarah Walker was officially an agent by the time she went back to Harvard for her Sophomore year. She was still being trained in many fields that most agents never would be, but her official training was over. Much like Chuck, she lived off campus with her 'Aunt Jane' and helped her out with her business, so they kept disappearing on jobs. The similarities would have made sense to anyone who knew what they were, because it was the perfect cover which allowed a young agent to fit in as a student while disappearing on missions all the time. Sarah was also known by a code name most of the time, but her's had originally been created by the male trainees and agents who she'd frozen out when they tried to make moves on her. She didn't mind being called the Ice Queen though, as it reminded her of the Frost Queen, what mama and the other adults in the family had said that Auntie Mary was called when she was an operative.

Another thing that she froze people out about was when anyone at Harvard asked what had happened to her 'Uncle Frank', who she'd been living with when she first started there. She'd gritted her teeth and forced herself to put up with her first handler's looks, comments and touches until he got drunk one night and came into her room to try and force her to give up what he believed he was due from her. Her call for medical assistance was carefully timed so that while he was alive when the CIA's medics arrived, there was nothing they could do to save him, and she'd stared Graham down as she told him that anyone else that tried to do that to her would get the same treatment. After that, she wasn't too surprised when her next handler turned out to be a woman, but she _was_ surprised when Jane Bentley told her what the deal she'd made with Graham was, and that no matter how much of an insult she considered a babysitting job like this to be, she'd do whatever it took to turn Sarah into the best agent she could be.

She also told Sarah the facts of life about this world she was being dragged into so that she could protect herself as much as possible. When she first got there, she sat her down and asked whether she was a virgin. When Sarah said. "Yes." she told her that sooner rather than later she was gong to be in situations where she would have to have sex. While Graham hadn't come out and said that, she read that from what they were discussing when he was telling her what her role was to be. Her advice was to go out and find someone she liked, or was attracted to at least, and make sure that her first time was on her terms, not anyone else's. Sarah hadn't wanted to believe that this was true, but she knew that she already trusted Jane more than she did Graham, so she did as she suggested. She had to get herself drunk to do it, but she found a nice boy at a party, someone who reminded her of Charlie actually, and they fumbled their way through their first time together.

It wasn't a wonderful experience, but she was glad that she'd followed Jane's advice, because less than a month later, the 'training' started and she was sent into two situations where she had to submit to men at the target site or be killed before she turned seventeen. If she hadn't listened to Jane, every thought she had to do with sex would have been associated with being violated. After the second one of those missions, she went to Graham and told him that if she was ever in that situation again, either she or every man at that location would be dead. Graham was about to tell her that she'd do as she was told or her parents would pay, but he read the conviction in her eye and realised that she wouldn't back down on this, so as she had too much potential to throw away on an issue like this, she wasn't given any more of _that_ training and she wasn't knowingly sent into a situation where where the only two choices were submit or die again, a lot of her missions were intentionally borderline after that and they became quite messy when she was dealing with the issue, but he was prepared to accept that for the agent she was becoming. The advice that Jane gave her formed the foundation of Sarah's trust in her, and she never gave her any reason to doubt that trust.

One thing that Sarah made sure she kept out of the letters she sent to Mama's mail drop whenever she could do so safely was any mention of what she'd been trained to do, or what she was doing on missions. The thought of somehow getting back to Mama (and Charlie) one day was what kept her going, but she couldn't bear the thought of how Mama would look at her if she had any idea of what she'd become. That thought made her cry herself to sleep all too often, after she'd made sure that any recording devices had been disabled, of course.

 **A/N: This is the basis of the idea I had for my next story in the Chuckverse, if there's any interest.**


	2. True Colours

**Had to make some minor changes to the first chapter because I found that I'd contradicted myself a couple of times. Biggest changes are that Chuck's Navy rank is Commander, not Lieutenant Commander and they all have multiple identities in the military.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither real life nor a Disney Princess tale.**

Christmas 2000 – Arcadia Ca

It turned out to be remarkably easy for Anna to settle into this amazing group. Chuck and Jeff gave her the background she needed to start working on the tech jobs that she'd be handling with them, and over time they expanded the information she needed. Emma, Ellie and Chuck did the same for the other analyst work that she'd be working on. Casey, Chuck, Ellie and Bry trained her in mission skills and the physical side of things in case she needed to assist or protect herself (as it was probable that she'd be coming along on missions to do the tech work down the track), and they were pleasantly surprised to find that she was already an expert in several disciplines of martial arts.

They also taught her advanced driving skills, and she found that the dorky little '93 Eagle Summit Wagon that she was going to be driving was in fact a rocket ship. She laughed at Chuck when he told her that she was going to be taught high performance driving in what looked like a shopping cart, so he showed her just what it could do, and then explained that it had a works rally spec Lancer evolution drivetrain underneath it, adding that it had been tweaked a bit on top of that. Chuck explained that this had been the original one that they had had built, and as they had an updated version of it based on a '96 Summit Wagon up in Palo Alto, they left this one in Arcadia in case they needed inconspicuous fast transport when they were working from home.

When they were talking about the cars after Chuck and the others had gone back to Palo Alto, Ellie laughed. "Yeah, Auntie Em's and my '99 and '93 Impreza wagons and Uncle Bry's '97 Stagea Wagon are pretty much the same thing. Auntie Di may not be warm and fuzzy all the time, but she does what she can to make sure we can get ourselves out of trouble in necessary. Chuck works out what he wants and where to get it done, and then she pushes it through."

Anna found that the hardest part was living two separate lives, the student and the hacker/spy in indentured labour to the government, but she had a bit of experience in that anyway, as she'd been hiding her hacker life from everybody before. She also had to concede that it was her own fault that she was owned by the government now, and she shuddered to think about what could have happened if anyone but Chuck had caught her. This wasn't a bad life anyway, she was comfortable, the work was both rewarding and exciting, and Ellie, Chuck and Jeff were friends, while Emma was like a beloved Aunt if not a mother figure. Casey was scary, but the man was a soldier through and through and he was fair, and not exactly unfriendly.

Emma quietly told her why Casey came to L.A. at odd times, explaining how Chuck had discovered and let him know that he had a daughter from the life he'd left behind when he'd been coerced into joining the spy world. She was wistful as she told the story about how they'd had to push him to let his ex-fiancé know that he was alive and why he'd faked his death. His daughter, who had been named after him, had decided that she wanted to get to know him after she started school and he'd tried to be there for her as much as possible, so now whenever Alex wanted to see him, he'd come down from Palo Alto.

When Anna started working with the group Chuck, Emma and Ellie had to temper Diane's expectations about how much workload she could add onto the team for Anna, pointing out that unlike Chuck and Ellie she _did_ need sleep and that they couldn't load work onto her while she was trying to learn the ropes without giving her a breakdown and blowing her cover as a student. When Diane argued that Ellie and Chuck had been doing it since they were kids without any trouble, they in turn pointed out that they'd also been trained for this life since they were toddlers, while Anna was trying to go through that training phase now, and keep up her life as a student at the same time. Diane grudgingly agreed to back off and not throw extra work their way with the expectation that they would advise her when Miss Wu was ready to take on a full workload.

January 2000 – Arcadia Ca

After the video conference was finished, Emma and Ellie took Anna upstairs for a few drinks to get over the traumatic experience, and decided to explain to her why their little group had such a heavy workload. Ellie looked at Emma, but Emma waved to her to do it with a smile. Ellie shook her head but turned to Anna. "OK, I know that you don't have the highest opinion of Auntie Di, and your view is quite valid in some ways, but on the other hand some of her demands on us are also justified. You know how we've all got multiple military identities to cover the type of work we do?" Anna nodded, wondering where this was going. "Well according to the official records, those identities are all real people and they're all on the Defense payroll, that's how we fund our operations here. Before you came along, our group was officially made up of twenty one people, made up of two First Lieutenants, two Captains and seventeen more at Major or above. With your three identities, we now have twenty four people on the books, so we have to be putting out enough work to justify having that big a group. While our various Agent identities are associated with the military identities, they are largely separate and we have work to do for them as well. That's why Auntie Di works our arses off, to maintain the cover that we are in fact legitimate groups of that many people and prevent anyone from looking into us too closely. Of course, we have also created a lot of short cuts that make all that easier to keep up."

Anna looked at Emma in disbelief, but she nodded to confirm what Ellie had said so she looked back at Ellie. "You've been doing the work of twenty one people, _on top_ of the ridiculous course load that you and Chuck are doing, and whatever you do on outside missions and jobs? How long have you been doing this?"

Ellie shared a look with Emma. "Twenty one ordinary people, yeah. We started in early Ninety Three... Initially it was only supposedly eight, two identities each for Auntie Em, Uncle Bry, Chuck and me, but Casey joined us and the scope expanded so it had gone up to eighteen within six months. Chuck started getting into the hacking and building a name for himself as the Piranha in Ninety Four and Auntie Di worked out who the Piranha was and formalised the Cyber work as part of our scope in Ninety Five, then he caught Jeff and we added him into the team in Ninety Six, that's when the numbers went up to twenty one. With the exception of Uncle Bry, our identities all started as Lieutenant or Captain equivalents. When Uncle Bry had his Army rank of Major reinstated, his Navy and Marine identities were created and set to the same level as well."

Anna looked like her head was going to spin. "So what are you all up to now?" Ellie glanced at Emma and she nodded. "Aunty Em is a Major equivalent for all three of her identities. Uncle Bry is an Army Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel equivalent for the Navy and Marines, Casey is at Major level for all four of his identities, Chuck is at Lieutenant Colonel equivalent for his Navy and Air Force identities and Major for the other two, I'm an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, Major equivalent for the Navy and Army and a Marine Captain, and Jeff is a Captain equivalent for his Navy identity and First Lieutenant for the other two. You're starting at second Lieutenant equivalent for your three identities."

Anna shook her head at them. "What the Hell have I gotten myself into?" Emma raised her glass in a toast with a smile. "Welcome to Ironpants' Shadow Agency!" Ellie frowned at that. "You know, I'd object to you referring to Auntie Di like that if it didn't fit her so well Auntie Em."

January 2000 – Cambridge Ma

When Sarah returned to the apartment she shared with her 'Aunt Jane' after the Christmas break, Jane took one look at her and asked. "How many did you kill?"

Sarah gave her a glare and spat out. "None!"

"OK, how many did you put in hospital then?"

"Just two, they thought that they'd be able to handle me and keep me quiet between them."

Jane shook her head. "I know it's hard, but you know it's better for you that you didn't kill them, no matter how much they deserved it. Graham will have less justification to come after you this way. Are you OK?"

That just got a shrug. "I have to be, don't I? He knows where Mama is and if I don't do as he says he'll go after her."

"I still think he's playing you, those pictures weren't clear enough…."

"I can't take that chance! If there's even a chance that he can get to Mama, well I can't risk it!"

Jane drew her into an embrace. "I know, I'm sorry Honey, I just can't stop hoping that you will find a way to get out of this before it destroys you, before that bastard destroys you."

Sarah pulled back a little to look a question at her and Jane gave her an exasperated look. "Of _course_ I swept for bugs! Who do you think you're talking to?"

The younger girl tried to laugh. "Hey, you're the one who keeps telling me not to trust anything or anyone!"

"Yeah, well, I think you can trust me to make sure it's safe before I start talking about that bastard. And for that matter, you're the one who's so adamant that you can trust your Auntie Mary and Ellie and your _Charlie_!"

Sarah nodded with a tear in her eye. "I just wish I could find them, if anyone could find Mama it would be Auntie Mary..."

"And you want to see Charlie."

She nodded again. "And I want to see Charlie….. So much."

Jane hesitated, she didn't want to take away one of the only two things the girl was hanging onto, but she also didn't want to see her devastated if she ever managed to find her wonderful Charlie and he wasn't what she'd built him up to be in her mind either. "It's been ten years Honey, he was only a kid when you knew him, what will you do if he's turned out like the rest of them?"

Sarah shook her head adamantly. "No. Not Charlie, he wouldn't!"

Jane had to laugh at her unfailing faith in someone she hadn't seen since she was seven and he was eight. "Well when you find him, you _know_ you have to bring him to me to check him out, because I don't believe anyone can be as perfect as you think he is!"

Sarah nodded again and Jane sent her off to get changed before they sat down to talk, because Graham had of course already scheduled missions for her. These were the standard type of missions that he assigned the girl, use any means necessary to get the information out of them and then kill them. And of course, the information was always 'extremely critical' and over half of the marks had records for doing nasty things to young girls. That bastard was still trying to break her, he kept setting her up with marks like this, and the damned information never turned out to be anywhere near as important as he said it was.

She'd tried to find this Mary Kowalski that Sarah kept talking about, but the only references to Kowalski that people had managed to track down for her had been in the most heavily redacted files she'd ever seen. Set off alarms all over the place when they were accessed too, the friend who'd looked them up for her had to do some serious tap dancing to talk his way out of the bind he found himself in when people came asking about that, he'd used up all the escape mechanisms he'd been saving up for when the shit hit the fan too. She'd never be able to ask him for a favour again, and she owed him _big_ time for all the shit she brought down on him. Maybe if Sarah stuck it out long enough after she left Harvard and Graham came through on what he promised, she'd be able to make it up to him then.

But if Sarah was right about these people, they might be able to help her find her mother and get both of them the hell away from all of this. They sounded too good to be true, but this girl was brilliant and she'd said that this Mary Kowalski had taught her all of her core skills, if so she _could_ be right, because Sarah had been better trained and more capable at sixteen than over ninety percent of the competent agents that she'd seen.

Sarah had had another name for her 'Auntie Mary', the Frost Queen. That seemed to tie in, because there _had_ been an Agent Frost who was a legend, supposedly blitzed every record at the Farm and in the field, the only woman ever to be awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Cross, but while the stories about Frost were everywhere, tying to look up anything about her set off similar alarms to Mary Kowalski. Which, come to think of it, did imply a direct link between the two.

* * *

Sitting in the bar waiting for the mark on her first mission after she came back to Cambridge, Sarah reflected on the fact that by constantly trying to force her to have sex with the marks, Graham had turned her into an expert in her second most hated skillset, torture. She'd sworn to herself that she wouldn't screw any of these dregs of society and give Graham the vicarious enjoyment and satisfaction of having forced her to give in and do what he told her to, so she'd had to make sure she could get the information out of them other ways, and in the last year, she'd gotten _very_ good at the alternative. Those marks more often than not didn't survive the experience, but she had to kill them anyway and from the information Jane dug up on them, she was doing the world a favour. She wasn't sure what it said about her that killing people was only the third least liked thing she was expected to do for her job though, well the second if you restricted that to what she was actually prepared to do.

As she was thinking that, a rough hand was dragged down her back in what was presumably meant to be the ape's version of a caress before squeezing her arse hard. She turned to give him a smouldering look through her lashes. "Aren't you supposed to buy me a drink first handsome?" The face that lit up eagerly at the implied submission when she said "first" was a match for her mark of the evening. OK, time to go to work!

June 2000 – Arcadia Ca

By the time the summer break came around, they'd organised training slots with both the CIA's SOG and the FBI's HRT for Anna. Between Casey, Bry, Chuck and Ellie, Anna went in better trained than half of the men there. She didn't have the field experience, but that was the point of sending her, to try some real world scenarios to stretch her and bed in the skills she'd learned from them.

Anna came back from the SOG training with a sort of Jungle Book name of her own and some interesting stories about Mowgli, Raksha, and Shanti. She was taken aback when Chuck pounced on her and demanded to hear everything she knew about this Shanti. Ellie tried to calm Chuck down and then explained to Anna that the Jungle Book names had originally been started back in Chuck's Special Operations training and were generally only used for them. Chuck was Mowgli, she was Raksha, Casey was Baloo and Bry was Bagheera, they'd called her Rikki because Bry had told them she was connected to them when he brought her in, which begged a question as to why they would have given some other woman a name which was associated with them.

Ellie, Emma and Chuck were looking at each other while Anna was repeating everything that had been said about this Shanti. Hearing that this tall brunette girl had looked younger than Ellie when she went through the training and she had beaten just about everyone except for Mowgli's record was quite interesting. The fact that the SOG guys had been saying that they'd love to see a contest between Mowgli and Shanti because they had a very similar style was even more so. Anna watched them getting more and more excited and hopeful and realised who they were hoping this Shanti was, Emma's daughter Sammie. This was confirmed when Chuck ran off to start searching for details of any the women who had been given SOG training within the last twelve months and search for the name Shanti in the CIA's systems.

Even Casey was backing away from Chuck after he'd gone through the CIA's systems and found that they'd been cleaned of the name that this 'Shanti' had been registered under for the training. Nothing was left of where the request had come from, and where the reports had gone to afterwards were all gone. All that existed was a record of the presumably throw away name, some comments in private communications about Shanti and a handful of images in private galleries that were tagged as Shanti. Chuck collected copies of all of these.

Chuck showed the images to Emma to get her confirmation of what he already was sure of, that this was Sammie. There was little doubt that the hair and eye colour weren't real and she'd done other things to alter her appearance as well, but the mannerisms and comments about her all screamed that this was Sammie. After he broke a few things in a fit of rage over finding her and then immediately losing her again, Chuck cheered up, because at least they had proof that she was alive and fit and healthy. (He and Emma were also relieved to read about what she'd done to those guys who'd tried to make her give them a little appreciation. They wouldn't have turned their backs on her if she'd screwed every guy there, but knowing that she didn't give it up to any guy who demanded it made them fell better.)

Watching him, Anna shook her head, she was attracted to Chuck (well as much as she'd ever been attracted to a guy, they didn't normally hit her buttons), as he was brilliant, funny, kind, caring, and the biological prerogative of being drawn to the top dog certainly applied, because Chuck was definitely 'lo mejor de lo mejor' (hey, she had made her home in Southern California now, so learning Spanish was almost a pre-requisite, and Russian was too in this family for that matter). What she was seeing here though was that _no_ other woman would ever have any chance with him, Emma's daughter had quite literally been his childhood sweetheart and she still owned his heart completely, there didn't appear to be any chance of that changing. This made Anna anxious to meet this girl, because she wanted to see what it was about her that had earned this kind of devotion, she jealous of the ability to do that, truth be told.

Bry went to talk to the SOG guys who'd been there back when Shanti went through training, and while he didn't get a whole lot more than what Anna had been told and Chuck had gleaned by sifting through everything on the CIA systems, he came back with the strong conviction that she was definitely Sammie. He also came back with the satisfaction of having hurt those ones who'd tried to press her for sex and the promise that if any of them saw her again, they'd let him know.

Having news about Sammie meant that Chuck went into the final year of his degrees much happier. He still had the ridiculous workloads, not to mention having the missions, job and completing three majors to balance out as well, and he still had to fly back and forth across the country in supersonic jets to get to the sessions at MIT and meetings in D.C. (well, he didn't mind that part actually), but he had proof that Sammie was there, and he had pictures of her now! He was running image recognition searches pretty much non-stop now, and they generated hundreds of false positives daily, but he didn't mind going through them, because about once or twice a week he'd find an image that _might_ be her, and he'd add it to the file before delving into the location where it was captured to see if there was anything more.

April 2001 – Stanford University

In the last couple of months at Stanford, Chuck's bestest buddy Bryce Larkin showed his true colours. Larkin had kept up the act pretty well actually, he was a manipulative son of a bitch and it hadn't taken Chuck long to confirm that his family had pulled strings to ensure that he was sharing a room with the most brilliant of the scholarship students to carry him through his degrees, but aside from getting testy that Chuck was rarely there to help him, he hadn't given away his agenda too much. The thing was, as well as leeching off Chuck and the other brighter students that he managed to con or seduce into helping him, Larkin had fallen back on the tried and true 'trading favours for grades' to ensure that he got through. He didn't care if the teachers were male or female, he did whatever he had to to get them off and make sure he got the grades he needed.

Professor Fleming, one of his easier marks and the CIA's recruiter at Stanford, had made some bullshit Subliminal Imagery module a mandatory component of his course late in the final year, and when Larkin turned up for one of the weekly 'counselling' sessions he'd been having with him for the past two and a half years after that, Fleming was almost bouncing off the walls. This made Larkin suspicious, because Fleming didn't normally get like that until _after_ he had worked his magic on him, so he asked what was going on.

Fleming waved a sheet of paper that Bryce recognised as the stupid Subliminal Imagery test that they had just done. "This! We've been looking for years for someone who could progress Project Omaha but no-one has ever come close before this! Finding the Omaha candidate will be my ticket to get onto the most important project that the CIA has, that anyone in the government has!"

"George, what are you talking about?"

"This! Weren't you listening? The purpose of the Subliminal Imagery test is to screen potential candidates for Project Omaha. The scientists who originally created the technology insisted that the minimum retention threshold for it to work properly was ninety two percent. We've never had anyone who came close to that before but your room mate Bartowski scored over ninety eight percent retention! When I bring him in I'll be able to get out of here and take my place on a real research project again, one that's more important than anything I've ever been involved in before, I'll be a real scientist again!"

If the old fool wasn't talking out of his arse, this project sounded important enough to be a major stepping stone for him. "What does this Project Omaha do George, what's the objective?"

Fleming laughed at him. "Do? It will create a super agent who makes everyone else obsolete! Once it's loaded into Bartowski and he's been trained, they'll give him the very best agents for his support team and they'll handle anything important. Any other agents will be relegated to grunt work, or gotten rid of."

Oh yes, _this_ was meant for him! Now he just had to work out how to get Fleming to swap his results for Bartowski's. "What did I get in that test George?"

Fleming waved dismissively. "Something in the eighties, nothing that could be used for the Project."

He started to object half heartedly when Bryce unzipped him, but his objections dried up quickly as Bryce knew they would, he'd been refining his technique for over ten years to get money out of his father's friends and no-one was better than him at this! Even in the state of euphoria that a session with Bryce always left him in though, Fleming refused to swap the test results, so Bryce went with his go to move, blackmail. Showing Fleming that he had videos of everything he'd done with him and every other student that they'd coerced into giving into Fleming in the last two and a half years, plus records of the altered results before and after Fleming's sessions with them did the trick, and before he left Fleming's office, Bryce's results had been swapped for Bartowski's and the notification that Bryce Larkin had scored over ninety eight percent retention on the Subliminal Imagery test had been sent off to the CIA.

They also had the framework for the plan to get rid of Bartowski, it would take a little longer to get everything in place for that, but Bryce was eagerly awaiting Bartowski's devastation when he lost everything over this, he'd have no chance of getting his degrees and his reputation would be gone, and they'd wipe him out when they reclaimed the scholarship money too, Bartowski would be totally destroyed, there was no way he'd ever recover from this!

He smiled as he thought about what would be the cherry on top, Roberts. He'd thrown her Bartowski's way back in Freshman year when he was trying to get him on-side and they'd been together ever since. Everyone in Robert's circles was certain that Bartowski was going to propose to her before they graduated, and that Roberts was going to say 'yes' because Bartowski was brilliant, so he'd be raking it in as soon as he hit the market. That made this part of his plan simple, he'd start seducing Roberts now and make sure that he timed it so that Bartowski walked in to see him fucking her brains out just after he'd lost everything else in his world, maybe he'd do it in Bartowski's bed... yes, that would be a nice touch!

Oh, this was perfect, with any luck Bartowski would be so broken that he'd top himself then and there! Bryce made a mental note to set up cameras to capture everything in the room. The sex tape with Roberts could prove useful down the track anyway, as she had good prospects herself and her family was quite well connected and influential, but if he could get footage of Bartowski killing himself in despair, that would definitely become part of his hall of fame!

While he was planning the final kick in the balls for Bartowski, he and Fleming were setting the main event, framing Bartowski for cheating and getting him kicked out. Fleming altered Bartowski's results on exams for the past two years to make it look like he'd stolen the best exam results from Fleming's files and had copied them for the exams. Bryce planted those stolen exams under the mattress of Bartowski's bed and set it up for Campus Security to come in and find them when he reported that his room mate had been acting strange lately and he thought that he may be on drugs.

Fleming brought in more grant money than anyone else in his department, so when he told his department head that Bartowski's exam results matched the stolen exam papers that were found under his bed, they just called Bartowski in and told him that he'd been found guilty of cheating, so he was being expelled from the university and his scholarship had been cancelled, without any investigation or due process. Fleming couldn't understand why Bartowski didn't seem worried when they added that if he didn't pay back the scholarship money he'd received within six months, it would become a criminal matter.

Chuck went back to the room he shared with Larkin, suspecting that this wasn't over yet, and walked in to find Larkin screwing Roberts in his bed, just as Larkin had planned. What Larkin hadn't planned though was Chuck punching him out, breaking his nose, and his jaw in two places and then standing over them, with Roberts pinned down by the now unconscious and bleeding Larkin and demanding to know how long this had been going on and who else she'd been screwing while she was with him.

Roberts burst into tears. "No! I never cheated on you Chuck, not before this! Bryce called me over to tell me that you'd been caught and thrown out for cheating and he was comforting me and….. I don't know how this happened, honestly Chuck! One minute he was comforting me and the next we were here, you have to forgive me! Please don't throw away everything we have for one mistake, I love you, you have to give me another chance!"

Chuck was relieved, he'd still have to get all the blood tests done of course, but if she was to be believed, at least she hadn't been screwing half the guys on campus, and this gave him the excuse he needed to break this off before he left too. There was something else though, she was good but he could see traces of something behind her expression, she was up to something here. Keeping the disgusted, broken expression on his face he shouted at her as he grabbed both of them by the arm and dragged them to the open door. "What, give you another chance to screw the next guy who catches your eye? I don't think so! We're through! You can stay with this piece of shit, you're made for each other!" With that he dumped the two of them in the hall, naked, and slammed the door, locking it.

It didn't take him more than ten minutes to throw all the clothes and things he kept in the room into his bags, collect his laptop and posters and retrieve the cameras that they'd installed to record what happened in the room, as he'd never trusted Larkin. He'd also retrieved the camera that Larkin had set up to record what happened on his bed and removed the recordings and everything else from Larkin's laptop, before he used malware to wipe it and dumped a pitcher of water over it to fry it.

Chuck opened the door to find Roberts trying to cover herself and Larkin looking about dazedly, trying to work out what happened. Chuck threw the camera that had been set up to record his bed at Larkin's head and asked. "What were you making the sex tape for Larkin? Was it for your spank bank, or were you planning on using it to blackmail Roberts? By the way, your computer seems to have had an accident!"

With that, he picked up his bags and stormed out, while Roberts scurried into the room and slammed the door. She didn't bother looking at Larkin when she came back out a couple of minutes later, mostly dressed, and ran off.

* * *

There hadn't been anything of any great interest other than the recordings of Fleming with Larkin and other students from his office and the records of students' altered results on Larkin's laptop, but those, and of course the recordings of Larkin planting the stolen exams under his mattress to be found by Campus Security made most of the case they needed to get his expulsion overturned, the rest was the logs of Fleming altering Chuck's results to match the stolen exams that Chuck took off the Stanford systems.

Under normal circumstances, it would take time for an investigation to be completed into anything of this nature, so Chuck, Casey and Jeff packed up, let the apartment go and headed back to Arcadia. A month after Chuck had been expelled, he went back to Stanford, with Bry as Senior Special Agent Martin Harris, and Auntie Di's partner, CIA Agent Roan Montgomery as Chuck's lawyer Herman Goldstein, senior partner at Goldstein, Cohen and Marks.

June 2001 – Stanford University

They'd created a solid image and history for Goldstein, Cohen and Marks and Martin Harris _was_ Bry's 'real' identity as an FBI agent, so there wasn't anything that Stanford would catch them on. Bry went in with all the subtly of a sledge hammer, throwing down with the proofs that everything that had been used to expel Chuck had in fact been fabricated by Larkin and Fleming, and that the department head who had expelled him had done no investigation and ignored the processes that he had been legally required to follow, he'd just expelled Chuck on Flemings' word. Faced with the proof that they were up shit creek and facing serious legal issues, the university reversed the expulsion and cancellation of Chuck's scholarship immediately, and offered him the opportunity to take his exams at his convenience so that he could graduate with the same standing as he would have before this unfortunate business.

The university officials were taken aback when Chuck said he'd take them then and there, because he'd moved away immediately after his reputation had been ruined and it would be difficult to come back to Palo Alto now, but they scrabbled to get it set up immediately, hoping that this would give them a chance to get out of trouble in this business. Bry and Roan stayed with the officials, going through all the details of the evidence and how the university had failed to comply with its legal responsibilities in this matter.

They were still there when Chuck returned a couple of hours later. The officials asked whether he wanted to schedule a day to come back to do the exams, presuming that he must have given up on them, but he shook his head, saying that they were all completed. While shocked, one of the officials was sent to get the results of the exams while they worked through the rest of it. Roan pointed out that his client had changed his name as soon as he left Stanford to try and get away from the stigma attached to the scandal of the way he was expelled and requested that Mr Bartowski's degrees be issued in his new name, Charles Carmichael, handing over the paperwork to show that the change of name was legal. They fell over themselves agreeing to this.

After that, Roan smiled to himself, because he was going to enjoy this part! With that, he went into the matter of compensation for loss of reputation and loss of potential earnings from Mr Bartowski's unlawful and very public expulsion for cheating. He presented numerous newspaper and on-line reports about Stanford's bright young star Charles Bartowski being caught cheating and expelled for that as evidence of this. When he presented a claim for six million dollars compensation for this, the university rejected it out of hand, saying that it was preposterous, he was getting his degrees and he'd already changed his name to get away from any stigma attached to the matter.

Roan looked a question at Chuck and Chuck made a show of grudgingly agreeing to something, so Roan nodded and took back the paperwork for the compensation claim. The university officials were taken aback at that and couldn't believe that they'd won that easily. "So that's it? You're withdrawing your claim?" Roan shook his head and grinned wolfishly as he presented the paperwork for a new claim of _twelve_ million. "Not at all. I really must thank you gentlemen, you see Mister Bartowski, sorry, Mister Carmichael, here is an honourable young man, and he didn't want to see the university disadvantaged for the failings of a few individuals. That was why he insisted that I halve the compensation claim that I proposed to lodge on his behalf. However, as I am handling this case on the basis of my fee being a percentage of the settlement I obtain for him, I managed to extract a dispensation from my client. This was that if, and _only_ if, you rejected the extremely fair compensation claim that he asked for out of hand and refused to consider it, he would agree to allow me to proceed with my original proposal, which is what we will now be doing. So..."

Roan spent the next hour going through the detailed earning projections for Stanford's brightest young star in possibly decades, against those of an unknown Stanford graduate with the type of results that they knew he was capable of. He also pointed out that, while Chuck had changed his name to get away from the bad publicity and slurs now attached to the Bartowski name, his sister was not in the position to do this, so by defaming Chuck, they had also adversely effected his sister's reputation and prospects. The university's legal representation were urgently whispering at the officials to pay the twelve million before they decided to up their claim, because they had plenty of evidence to support a much bigger claim than that, and kid's lawyer had already told them them he wanted to push it as high as he could to increase what he got out of this.

They left Stanford that day with Charles Carmichael's degrees (his results had been at least as good as he'd been shooting for before this business blew up in his face), and the assurances from the university to both his lawyer and the FBI that they would provide suitably glowing references to any university that he chose to do post graduate studies with _and_ confirm that it had been proven that the charges of cheating levelled against Mr Bartowski were totally false and he'd since obtained his degrees without revealing the name he was now using if they received any enquiries on the matter. They also had confirmation from the bank that the twelve million dollars had been transferred into Goldstein, Cohen and Marks' account. Even though they'd given the university leave to spin it so that it was them who had discovered the discrepancies and made good of their own accord, the university officials only just managed to avoid swearing at them, or openly saying. "Don't darken our doors again!"

* * *

They waited until they were on the Air Force C-21A and headed for L.A. before they burst out laughing, because the Dean of the university had looked as though he was about to have a heart attack when he had to authorise the payment of the twelve million. When they landed at the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport, Roan came back to the house in Arcadia for a while to see Emma and Ellie because as Diane's partner, he'd been part of the family since Ellie and Chuck had been relocated with Emma after Stephen's disappearance, and he'd been 'Uncle Roan' to Ellie and Chuck since then.

Roan Montgomery wasn't the warrior that Bry, Mary, Casey, Chuck, or even Ellie were, but he was still one hell of an agent. Roan could charm or coerce almost anyone into or out of almost anything. As he'd just proven at the university, when the full frontal approach won't work, he was the one who could achieve the objective. He was also the one who had taught Ellie and Chuck these skills, because charm wasn't a skillset that Bry or Casey were able to utilise well, in fact he'd failed Casey twice in the class that he taught on the subject at the Farm, Infiltration and Inducement of Enemy Personnel, or Seduction School as it was commonly called. Anna didn't know what to make of Roan at first, but she soon took the others' lead and relaxed into accepting his easy charm, and she was calling him 'Uncle Roan' too by the time he left.

Roan also gave them a bit more information on Sammie, and something else to search for, because when he saw the images they had from the SOG training she did, he was certain that she'd been in one of his Seduction School classes a couple of years back. What he recalled was a reserved girl who's performance had been absolutely brilliant, saying that she was one of, if not _the_ most accomplished and talented student he had ever had in that class. He also said that it was almost as if she'd been training for that all of her life, and Emma sadly said that she had, basically, explaining that Joe, her father, was also a master of that. She added that he had been teaching her those tricks from when she was a little girl, and he would have been grooming her in the tools of the trade for the eight and a half years that she was with him after he took her away.

Emma broke down at that and Bry took her in his arms, while Roan told them a few other things about her from the class, pointing out that she'd rejected any and all advances or gestures of friendship that had been made to her outside of the class exercises and that she appeared to embrace the name what all of the males and many of the females in the class were calling her, the Ice Queen. Roan added as an aside that he also recalled hearing that name bandied about in certain circles over the past couple of years, so she could well be still known as that. As soon as Roan left, Chuck rushed off to start searching for the Ice Queen in the CIA's systems and databases.

That search returned a _lot_ of hits, many were comments from bitter male (and female) agents who she'd shot down when they tried to seduce her, but even more served to record the meteoric rise of a talented new agent who outshone just about everyone else. The fact that most of her many, many, missions were two or three days in duration at most and the only times she had had longer missions were aligned with school breaks tied in with the fact that Sammie was still in university according to the letters she still sent to the mail drop every month or two. Chuck added searches for references to the Ice Queen to the on-going image searches he was doing, and he eagerly dove into in-depth searches whenever the results of the two searches intersected.

Within a week of the settlement with the university, they had pointed a number of prominent and controversial media outlets at Stanford, with the suggestion that they enquire as to developments in the Bartowski cheating case. The resulting news and gossip reports loudly proclaimed that Charles Bartowski had been proven innocent of all of the charges that had been used to hound him out of the very field that he had been poised to set ablaze once he finished at Stanford, conveniently ignoring the fact that they had been the ones who'd been eagerly reporting those charges and comments as soon as they heard the juicy gossip that the bright young star had been caught cheating. Chuck had had his applications for post graduate studies at Caltech as Charles Carmichael accepted by then.

* * *

As they were all going to be working out of L.A. now, it was agreed that it would be better to have a base for their cover business away from the house, to avoid drawing attention to the house in relation to their missions. Given that both Chuck and Anna would be studying at Caltech (Anna was still an undergrad, but Chuck would be a post-grad), it was quickly agreed that the the best location for the business would be in Pasadena, and they went hunting for a suitable property.

Much of Pasadena was still a rough place, they were talking about a gentrification project that would clean it up and bring up the values, but they hadn't even got the planning off the ground, let alone started anything, so there was a lot of real estate in need of tender loving care there that could be picked up quite cheaply. This meant that it was just the right time for them to be looking to pick up a property to run the business out of.

After looking over the currently available options, Chuck, Casey, Emma, Bry and Ellie agreed on a warehouse with an office/storeroom floor above it and a basement. Having government connections and being able to make immediate payment drove the price down even further than the current level of the weak market and they picked it up for a song. Diane organised for rather special government contractors to come in and do some very specific refurbishments to the building. Their first task was to significantly upgrade the physical security and add security systems. The next was to convert one end of the building into what were officially the offices for two businesses, Charlemagne Technical Services and Shamrock Security. After that the remainder of the ground floor was made into Shiloh Secure Storage.

While they were doing the ground floor, the core work was done to refurbish the office/storeroom level above and the basement level below, including installing all the utilities to allow them to be fitted out relatively quickly and easily. They also reinforced the roof so that it could be used as a helipad for MH-53 Pave Lows. Chuck and the others didn't argue, and nor did they ask questions, when Diane told them that she'd gotten all of the core work funded by the government, so all they had to cover was fitting out the offices, storage area and basement.

August 2001 – Pasadena Ca

When they moved in, Jeff was listed as the official owner of Charlemagne Technical Services, while Casey owned Shamrock Security and Emma owned Shiloh Secure Storage. While they worked together on all the cover businesses, Casey and Chuck's offices were in Shamrock and Jeff and Anna's were in Charlemagne. The office in Shiloh was generally empty as it had no external customers, they just used it for their own storage and so the building looked used. Actually, the majority of what was stored in there was their growing collection of luxury and performance cars and bikes that they'd acquired from various government agency (DEA, FBI, ATF and the like) seizures to use on missions, as well as their 'work' cars and vans.

When word got around that Chuck was back in town, they got enough calls to make Charlemagne and Shamrock look like viable businesses. Their customers went right back to when they were first relocated to Arcadia, the cover life that Auntie Di had had set up of two teenagers forced to move in with their maiden aunt (who was just getting by) when their parents died meant that, to keep up appearances, they _had_ to get jobs to help out. Even though he was supposedly thirteen, Chuck was still too young to get any 'real' job at the time, so he took the 'odd job' route. Those 'odd jobs' quickly turned into a form of mobile technical repair business, with the supposedly sixteen year old Ellie driving Chuck around and helping out (while she wasn't up to the higher level technical tasks that Chuck could handle even at eleven, she was quite capable of handling general technical repairs and installations). This also saved Ellie from the type of crap she would have most likely had to deal with as a beautiful girl in the type of places that would have taken her on at sixteen without a work permit.

The name Charlemagne's Repairs started out as a crack that Ellie made at Chuck (Charles the Great's Repairs), but people liked it and identified with it, so it stuck. In late '93 when Chuck supposedly turned fourteen and could therefore 'legally' work, Casey came in as a friend of the family with a van and permits for both Chuck and Ellie to work with him, and Charlemagne Technical Services was born. Like Ellie, Casey was fine with doing general technical repairs and installations, so he did the majority of the jobs, with Chuck and Ellie working on jobs after school. Charlemagne did enough business to show how they were getting by OK, and in '96 Jeff joined them as another 'friend of the family' to expand the business.

It was well known that the business was based on Chuck, so Casey and Jeff's decision to pull up stakes and move the business to Palo Alto when he went to Stanford in late '97 was believable to most folk. Ellie having a scholarship and working part time with Emma (who'd started her own consulting business in '93) also made for a believable scenario, so their cover lives were solid.

There wasn't much in the way of technical services on offer around that part of L.A. and most of the people they'd used to do work for had had to turn to the Burbank Buy More's 'Nerd Herd' for technical services. That hadn't worked out well for them, so when people heard from Anna (who'd been doing jobs for some of their old customers on behalf of Charlemagne) that Chuck and the others were moving back to L.A. permanently, the calls started coming in. This was also part of the impetus to get a property to operate the business out of, as they had enough of a customer base for it to hold up as a legitimate business and support the cover.

If they didn't have to keep their Defense roles secret from anyone outside of the family, none of them would have _needed_ to work outside of what they were doing for their defense and intelligence groups, because they were paid well enough to live quite comfortably. Quite aside from that, even after buying the Pasadena property and paying for the fitting out of the building, with the settlement from Stanford they had well over twenty five million available to them, and their investments were growing that by at least 10 – 15% each year.

Of course the stupid, self important bureaucrats in the DIA's Cover Bureau didn't know anything about that, and they were a problem because they had enough brass behind them to be able to force the family to keep playing out their stupid scenarios of a struggling family still trying to recover from the situation they'd been in when Ellie and Chuck's parents died eight years before, even though Emma, Ellie and Chuck had already proven that they were quite capable of leaving that behind on the basis of what they'd achieved.

The Cover Bureau had also latched onto those reports about Chuck being expelled from Stanford for cheating and used that to try and force them to stay down in the minimum wage slot, ignoring the fact that the follow up reports showed that he'd been cleared of those charges and allowed to get his degrees. The way that Ellie ripped into them for trying to interfere with her career in medicine by applying their fucking stupid and invalid restrictions to the entire family, even though Chuck had already been cleared probably didn't help. Luckily Chuck had buried the identity of the landlords and the connections between Charlemagne, and Shamrock and Shiloh deep enough that, as far as the Cover Bureau could determine they were just renting one office in the building, which their cover business was enough to support.

* * *

Meanwhile, Bryce Larkin was at the Farm, bemoaning his fate. After the incident with Bartowski, when he managed to get back into the room and found that his laptop was destroyed to the extent that he couldn't get anything off it, he remembered Bartowski's comment about a sex tape and panicked, because he didn't know whether he had just been talking about the camera pointed at his bed, or he had actually seen what was on the laptop before he dumped the water over it and fried it.

What Fleming had said about Bartowski not seeming worried about being expelled also seemed to indicate that he had something up his sleeve, so Bryce and his family had called in every favour they could and used an excuse about him needing to go back East urgently for specialised medical treatment due to complications arising from the blows to the head that were inflicted by Bartowski to get projected results posted for his final exams and his degrees issued early on that basis. As soon as he'd left, the CIA's techs had scrubbed every reference to him except for his final results and degrees that were kept on file from Stanford's systems, so he pretty much disappeared. By the time Stanford discovered this and went to his family, he'd disappeared to them as well. To all intents and purposes, Bryce Larkin had ceased to exist outside of some code name classified files at the CIA that very few people could access in May 2001.

When he left Stanford he was supposed to go straight to Project Omaha to get a start on the grand career he had waiting for him though, _not_ to go to the Farm for six to twelve months of torture training! Apparently, the ones working on Project Omaha systems hadn't managed to finish them yet, so the powers that be decided that the time would be best spent getting the Omaha candidate through all the physical aspects of his training. With that thought in mind, they sent him to the Farm and told the people running the Farm to push him through the system.

Unfortunately for Larkin, they also told them that they had a lot riding on him, so he was expected to beat the Ice Queen's scores, and the way he pissed people off with his attitude and overblown opinion of himself as soon as he got there meant that the word went around quickly that the people at the top expected him to be better than the Ice Queen or else. As a result, Larkin was in constant pain from the day he arrived, and for all the way he flinched when he saw the state he was in in the mirror, nothing was more bruised than his ego.

 **A/N: According to Google Translate, 'lo mejor de lo mejor' is supposed to be Spanish for 'the best of the best'. But I'm sure Sev will correct my Spanish as usual. ;^)**

 **NB: Larkin isn't gay per se in this story, he'll just screw anyone and everyone to get whatever he wants, be it an objective or gratification. So not gay, just an indiscriminate man whore.**


	3. Shock and Aftermath

**I didn't go into 'the other thing with Jill' yet, Chuck just saw something in her eyes that told him that she was putting on an act. FWIW, the storyline on her here is that Jill is still Fulcrum in this world. Her original mandate was to get close to Chuck and recruit him to their cause as the bright young star at Stanford, but she was told to switch her efforts to Larkin after he was identified as the Omaha candidate. I'm not sure at this point whether Jill will come back into the story as she was always a waste of space as a character for me.**

 **Nah, I still don't like the douche or the blonde Bimbo! ;^)**

 **NB: Derogatory references to orientation _only_ apply to the Bryce Larkin _character_ , they don't apply to anyone in real life.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.**

September 2001 – Pasadena

Ellie's plans for Chuck's 20th birthday party and Chuck and the others' plans to get their cover businesses up and running were all forgotten a week and a half into September, as the news that went around the world on the eleventh made many people forget what they'd been planning. The impact on some was for an hour, others for a day, and others it would effect them for the rest of their lives. While the news of the attack on the twin towers broke over them like a wave, the other attacks didn't have the same impact after they'd confirmed that Diane, Roan, Stephen and the other people they knew in D.C. were OK. It took them longer to find out that a couple of the people they worked with and were friendly with (you couldn't exactly call people friends when you could never let them see your face or hear your unaltered voice because there was no way that they wouldn't spot that you're ten to fifteen years younger than your identity, or risk that they might recognise a long term fugitive from the CIA or famous operatives like Casey and Bry) had in fact been in the towers when they went down.

Every other job they had was put aside to work on hunting down and evaluating information relating to the attacks, even Casey and Bry dove into tracing the information. Someone who only saw Ironpants and didn't know Diane Beckman well enough to see past the mask would have believed that she was basking in the acclaim and power that was coming from her small unit delivering two thirds of the actionable intel coming out in the wake of the attacks, but Diane was breaking inside. She knew, and had been friends and family with, people who had been lost, and she couldn't get the image of the rest of the men, women and children who had fallen to this out of her head either.

Luckily, in the wave of shock and anguish that followed the attacks, no-one paid that much attention when people didn't turn up for classes, or even work, so they were free to devote all of their time to investigating the matter, passing along any actionable intel as soon as it had been confirmed. Even on the first day though, there was an undercurrent of suspicion growing in the intelligence community, because the powers that be were ignoring the valid intel they were being given and _ordering_ investigations to go in other directions without any evidence to support their decisions.

Chuck, Casey, Bry, and even Ellie were being sent off on missions within a few days after the attacks, though half of Bry's missions were as part of the CIA contingent. The problem was that they were always being sent in the wrong direction, so while they saw a lot of action, added to their medal counts and gained promotions from their parts in these missions, they found nothing to do with what they were supposedly there to look into, because they were in the wrong place for that.

By the time the initial reactions to the attacks had settled down to become part of the War on Terror, their groups had a notably higher profile than they'd had before the attacks, because anyone who knew anything recognised that they had been the ones who had managed to locate information that no-one else could. With the increased interest in their groups, they had to expand, so Diane, Emma, Ellie and Chuck had to go through the process of interviewing and selecting suitable people to bring in. With the new people spread around the country, and some overseas, it wasn't too hard to set it up so that there was no face to face communication, other than with the newly minted Brigadier General Diane Beckman.

All of their new and expanded groups were bundled into what was now semi-officially known as the Special Projects Group. There were more than a few questions about why a shiny new one star General was meeting with the National Security Advisor so often, and no-one bought the line that they were just two friends meeting for drinks much of the time (quite aside from anything else, no-one believed that Ironpants _had_ any friends). There were also questions about how Navy Commander Charles Carmichael was promoted to Captain and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Eleanore Bardot was promoted to a full Colonel before they were even halfway to the minimum time in grade in the aftermath of 9/11. Neither the fact that both of these officers were part of the new General's command, or that their questions had been shut down without any explanation by the Secretary of Defense sat well with most of the people asking.

While he was sick about what had happened, Chuck was of two minds as to whether he liked the changes to what they did as a result of that. While on one hand, he liked being able to delegate the boring grunt work to someone else on his teams, having to manage a diverse group of people around the world was proving rather more difficult than he'd imagined it would have been. It wasn't getting to Ellie quite as much, but then she was more used to handling groups of people from her university and research projects.

* * *

While Chuck and the others were getting used to the changes in their lives. Sarah was settling into her last year at Harvard. Like them, she was being sent away on missions a lot, but many of these were still the same bullshit missions that Graham had been sending her on from the start. Jane was working to identify areas where Sarah could extend her capabilities with extra training while also filling the role of Assistant to the Deputy Director for Operations, because under the deal she'd made with Graham, after Sarah left Harvard and became a full time agent, she would be taking over as the next Deputy Director for Operations.

The DDO wasn't the biggest role in the CIA, but it was one of the most important, and she'd seen too many field agents die because the person filling the role of the DDO was a political appointee who didn't understand what went on in the field. She knew that she could manage the CIA's operations better than any of the DDOs she'd worked under to date, including the current one.

May 2002 – Cambridge Ma

Jane wasn't at all surprised when Sarah graduated summa cum laude on her Law and Languages degrees and magna cum laude on her business degrees, because she knew how brilliant this girl was. They'd gone through a rough patch while Sarah had been doing her final exams, because she was in tears about losing the connection to the woman who had looked after her for three and a half years, and she'd grown very close to. Jane sat her down and told her in no uncertain terms that they would _not_ be losing contact with each other, because she had already been setting things in place to ensure that it was generally known that she was Sarah's mentor in the CIA.

She explained to her that it was an established tradition in the CIA that older, more experienced agents mentored promising up and coming agents and helped them deal with the situations and roadblocks that they encountered. While there were no formal rules associated with this, all of the old school believed in the mentoring system, so even Langston Fucking Graham wouldn't be able to keep them from communicating without more questions and backlash than he'd want to deal with. Sarah calmed down after that and they spent a couple of days setting up all of their communications channels. This proved to be a good idea, because as soon as Sarah had finished her last exam, Graham had her dragged straight off to Langley to send her off on her first assignment as a full time agent, they hardly had enough time to say goodbye.

Waiting in Graham's reception area, Sarah Walker was anxious about what Graham was going to assign her to, given that the vast majority of the hundreds of assignments he'd given her over the past three and a half years had been essentially 'go there, screw the intel out of them and kill them'. She also knew that the only way she'd avoided punishment for not actually screwing the intel out of them was the fact that she'd just about always brought back whatever intel they had, killed them as ordered and got away clean, so she'd had pretty much the best record of any field agent for the past three years at least.

Jane had warned her that Graham would almost certainly have her reporting directly to him so that he could keep her under his control, and he wasn't likely to back down on trying to force her to use sex in most missions, because he seemed hard wired on that issue, so she'd have to be careful about how she handled him and not let herself be backed into a corner.

When she was called into Graham's office, she sat down and waited for Graham to speak, but when he started to go off about her failure to follow orders she politely pointed out that her record of number of missions and success rate was right up there with the best, quoting the stats that Jane had made sure she memorised that proved that she'd completed at least three to four times as many missions as other agents and had a success rate that was at least thirty to forty percent higher than anyone else.

Graham tried to catch her out, but he knew those stats as well as she did, so in the end he threw a file at her and cut the meeting short. "I don't have time for this Walker! You've been assigned to an inter-agency task force that will be primarily be operating in Europe and based in Paris initially. Your flight leaves in two hours from Ronald Reagan, your ticket is waiting at the airport." He have her an evil smile. "And if you screw up in any way on this assignment, well I don't think I need to remind you what will happen, do I?"

Sarah shook her head, tight lipped and he barked "Get out! And you better not miss that flight!"

She didn't say a word, just nodded, stood up and walked deliberately out of the room. As soon as she was out of sight of his receptionist she started hurrying though, because she was already late to check in for an international flight and she had to get her things from the hotel before she could go to the airport. Luckily, her things were still packed at the hotel and the CIA had made all the arrangements for the room, so she made the cab driver wait while she ran in, grabbed her bags and rushed out again, throwing her keycard at the man on the counter and calling out her room number and that she was checking out as she ran past.

It was less than an hour before departure time (if Graham had been telling the truth) by the time she reached Ronald Reagan Airport, but she charmed the pants off the guy at the ticket counter to get him to find out for her which airline her booking was with and was checked in and through to the departure lounge just in time for the first class boarding call. She broke off the string of epithets she was directing at Graham in her head to snort, that was one thing at least that had worked in her favour, by throwing her on a plane at the last minute (the records showed that her ticket booking had been arranged over half an hour after he kicked her out of his office), the only ticket they could get was a first class one. With that old bastard, she was sure that she would have been flying coach if he could have organised it.

As she accepted a glass of champagne and relaxed, she reflected on the call she'd made to Jane on the way to the hotel to tell her what was going on. The way Jane was shouting and the language she was using actually managed to embarrass the cab driver, because what Sarah could see of him was going red as he listened in. When Jane had calmed down a little, she told Sarah that this didn't change anything, she was still her Aunt Jane, her mentor, and she was still going to be there for her whenever she needed her, they'd just be on different continents until this assignment finished and she came home. With that thought, Sarah settled down to read the information pack that Graham had thrown at her, thinking when she finished that the coming home part might be a while.

May 2002 – Paris

Arriving at Orly rather more relaxed and refreshed, Sarah got through customs easily enough by charming the customs officers and was soon in a taxi on the way to an apartment that she was to be sharing with the other agents on the team she was assigned to. When she let herself into the apartment, it had been trashed, which implied that they had either been burgled, or she was sharing the apartment with party animals.

She spun around, looking for something she could use as a weapon, when she heard a pistol being cocked behind her, but taking in the naked redhead who was looking at her over the sights of the pistol, she wasn't sure whether she felt relief or dread. She quirked a smile at the face she knew from before she had gone to Harvard as she said. "Hey Red, how about getting rid of the gun and putting something on?"

The redhead put the gun up, but aside from that made no move to do either as she asked. "Blondie? What the hell are you doing here?"

"It appears that we're working together, but as we discussed at the Farm four years ago, I don't swing that way so could you please stop advertising that the carpet doesn't match the drapes and put something on?"

The other woman grinned at her. "As I told you then, don't knock it until you've tried it Blondie! You can make the coffee while I get dressed." And with that she turned and headed back into the room she'd come out of.

Sarah shook her head and headed for the kitchen, hunting around until she found the coffee and started a pot percolating. The redhead came back out twenty minutes later looking as if she'd just stepped off a catwalk and grabbed a cup of coffee, taking a few sips before she looked at Sarah and asked. "So what's this about us working together?"

"Well I presume you've been told that you're on an inter-agency task force that's based here?"

She nodded. "Then the fact that we're both here says that we're working together."

The redhead grinned. "Well when you put it like _that_ , it's so obvious!"

Sarah rolled her eyes and asked which rooms were free. The other woman hesitated and said. "There are specific room assignments because the wardrobes have already been stocked with a selection of outfits for each of us, wait here, I'll go get the paperwork." With that she hurried off to her room.

When she brought back the paperwork and Sarah looked through the files to see which was her room, she froze….. "This isn't the name I've been assigned for this mission, it's my regular identity."

The other woman nodded, not looking happy. "Same! I don't know what they're playing at, but they seem determined to expose our identities to each other. By the way, Carina Miller, DEA, nice to meet you."

Sarah shook the hand she offered. "Sarah Walker, CIA, charmed…. Look, I don't know about you Red, but I don't like the idea of everyone knowing who I am, how do you feel about _not_ telling the others who we are?"

"Works for me! I sorta know and trust _you_ Blondie, but as far as I know I _don't_ know these other two… So yeah, a girl's gotta keep her secrets, doesn't she?"

With that agreed, they showed each other their files and had a look at who their team mates were. Zondra Rizzo was FBI and seemed to have been in the business about as long as they had, with an impressive record, but Amy Rogers was CIA and while she was around the same age as the rest of them, she appeared to be pretty much fresh off the Farm. Knowing what most male agents were like, they were relieved that there weren't any staying in the apartment, but wondered whether there was another apartment for the male members of the team.

While they were having a discussion about what an arsehole Graham was for making her run for the plane like that when the start date for the assignment wasn't for another week and a half, Carina stopped and apologised about the state of the apartment. She explained that she hadn't been expecting anyone else to turn up yet, so she'd decided to make the most of the place and have a few parties while she had it to herself. Sarah waved that away and suggested that they get changed into something more appropriate and get the place cleaned up.

They were pleasantly surprised to find that they fell straight back into the easy camaraderie that they'd had when they went through their initial training at the Farm five years before, and talked about their time there as they cleaned. Sarah had clearly been the best at everything while they were there and most of the male recruits had resented being shown up so badly by a girl, but Carina had challenged and stretched herself by trying to keep up with her, and as a result she had come in second in most fields, nowhere near Sarah but still well ahead of everyone else. They both remembered that the other had been driven for some reason while they were there, but neither of them was comfortable enough to admit what that was yet. It was also obvious that Carina wasn't ready to discuss the circumstances under which she'd been 'traded' to the DEA when she left the Farm.

They spent the next four days sightseeing and shopping, generally settling into Paris, but their developing friendship and potential working relationship took a hit on the fifth morning when the guy that Carina had brought home the night before came out while Sarah was making herself breakfast and started mauling her. His screams had Carina running out in time to see the guy on the floor, desperately trying to get away from the woman who was advancing on him with a carving knife, so she grabbed him by the hair to drag him to the front door and throw him out. She said "Wait!" to Sarah, then ran back into her room, quickly throwing some clothes on and grabbing his clothes before running back to the front door to yank it open.

The guy was standing right at the door, bashing on it and demanding that they let him in. Carina kicked him in the family jewels and then her knee broke his nose and threw him back as he folded. One of his Italian shoes did a bit more damage to his face when she threw his clothes at him, and he pissed himself in fear at the cold menace in her voice as she said that if he ever came anywhere near her or her friend again she'd kill him.

Carina slammed the door and went back to talk to Sarah and try to repair the damage. When Sarah started talking about finding somewhere else to live because she wasn't going to take being attacked by her leftovers ever again, she begged her not to and promised that she'd _never_ bring a guy back to the apartment again. It took a while longer, but Sarah eventually agreed to give it a try, saying that she was out if that _ever_ happened again.

That was the environment that Zondra walked into later that next day. Both Sarah and Carina had learned to rely on their ability to read people in their lives on the wrong side of the law before they fell into the CIA's clutches, and after talking to her for a while they both were confident that they could trust Zondra, so they showed her their files, as well as her own and Amy's.

After confirming that Zondra Rizzo was indeed her regular identity rather than the identity that she was using on the assignment, Zondra agreed that there was something wrong with the fact that someone apparently fresh out of the Farm and untried like this Amy was being teamed up with the three of them. It didn't make sense, they were putting proven three hard hitters together with….. what?

While they were pondering that, Carina brought up what had happened that morning and the agreement she'd reached with Sarah, and Zondra was all for it, saying that she'd kill any reject who thought that she was his for the taking just because he had been allowed in, and then she'd do the same to the stupid slut who brought him in.

The three women spent the next five days bonding, and finding more and more reasons why it was logical that _they_ would have been teamed up together, because their records since they joined their agencies were similar (Sarah avoided mentioning how many she'd killed and Carina avoided mentioning how many she'd fucked for the job, but they had all successfully completed a far higher number of dangerous missions than anyone else in their respective agencies in the past four years), which once again raised the question of what the other one had been assigned to the team for.

Given their shared affinity for dangerous missions, it was no surprise that the three of them had more than a passing acquaintance with the SOG, HRT and military special operations teams from the missions they'd done with them. Therefore, it was also no surprise that they started swapping Mowgli stories that they'd heard, because Mowgli seemed to be the poster child of Special Operations. Carina got some good mileage out of the military Special Operations stories, like the one where he'd taken a Hokum and used it to take out an armoured cavalry company to cover the escape of the rest of his team.

Sarah one upped her with the SOG guys comparing her to Mowgli and wanting to see who would win if they competed, but Zondra won, because she'd actually _seen_ him! She told the story about a major FBI operation that had the HRT and military special operations teams brought in because the crime family they were trying to take down had hired a mercenary army to keep the authorities out. The special operations guys had some experimental transports that looked like a cross between a plane and a helicopter, and funny little unmanned helicopters that they were using to check out the roof of the building.

"Apparently those little unmanned helicopters had somehow showed them that the doors to the roof were booby trapped and they couldn't be disabled from the outside, so they came up with another way of getting a force into the top floor of the building. One of the helicopter/plane things went up and hovered outside the top floor. They were sending a live video feed from out of the back of it when someone opened up with a machinegun and shot out the glass wall in front of them. What happened next shocked everyone watching, because some guy came running past the camera flat out and jumped across the twenty foot gap to land in the conference room with the window shot out. The guy had a light line attached to him and he quickly slung it around something solid before using it to drag a heavier line across and secure it. As soon as he had it secured, a much bigger guy slid down the line and then the SEAL platoon went down after him. Once the SEALs were all down, they released the line and the SEALs secured the floor while someone deactivated the booby traps so that the rest of the Special Operations guys could come in from the roof. They swept through the building and attacked the mercenaries from behind, which in turn allowed the Marines take them out."

"It was only afterwards that we found out that that crazy bastard who'd made that jump across the gap into the conference room eighteen storeys up, disabled the booby traps and secured the servers for the FBI to take them over was _Mowgli_ , and the big guy who went next was apparently his partner, the guy they call Baloo. I wanted to meet this guy because… well he's a legend, but I couldn't get anywhere near him. But here's the bizarre thing, with the SEALs, Special Forces, Marine Recon guys, even Baloo, it didn't take more than one look to recognise what they are, dangerous! This guy Mowgli, who's supposed to be the baddest motherfucker of the lot though, he looks like an ordinary guy. He's tall and fit, yeah, but he just looks like a nice, cute young guy that someone like Carina would love to deflower, it's bizarre!"

That discussion on went late into the night, because Sarah and Carina wanted to cry bullshit until Zondra offered to get the videos from the operation to prove it to them.

On the night before their assignment was supposed to begin, Sarah made the point that maybe someone else had realised the same thing as they had about this Amy, seeing as she hadn't turned up, and Carina and Zondra agreed that that looked like the case. A bit after midnight though they were proven wrong, because the woman in question came in, giggling and talking loudly with a couple of French guys. The other three women burst out of their rooms with pistols in their hands, but when they saw the bags they realised who she was and disappeared the guns before the newcomers saw them. Carina quickly ducked back into her room to put something on while Sarah and Zondra went to tell the Frenchmen to leave, because no guys were allowed in their apartment.

Amy started loudly telling them that they had no right to tell her what to do and that her friends were staying, but she shut up when Zondra slapped her hard enough to make her head spin. The smell of her was enough to turn their stomachs, because she smelled so strongly of sex and sweat that it was a good bet that she'd spent that last few days doing nothing but screwing nonstop. They would have thought she'd been held prisoner and pack raped if it wasn't for the fact that she was hanging onto the two guys and insisting that they stay (later finding out that they'd picked her up at the airport lowered their opinion of her even more).

The Frenchmen were apparently smarter or more sober (or both) than Amy was, because they read the very real threat coming from the now three dangerous looking women glaring at them and scarpered before they got hurt.

When they were gone, Zondra grabbed Amy and said. "Listen up sperm bank, because I'm only going to tell you this once! The number one rule of this apartment is no guys! If you bring a guy back here we'll get rid of him, and then you, and no-one will find your remains! Now we've got to be at the embassy for the initial meeting for this assignment in about eight hours so go and have as many showers as it takes to stop you smelling like a fifty cent whore who made a few grand on Labor Day and then go to bed. Do _not_ make any noise to keep me awake or I will hurt you!"

Amy went to indignantly tell her that she couldn't say that to her, but shrank back when the look Zondra gave her told her exactly what she'd do to her if she said a word. Zondra pointed to the one closed bedroom door. "That's your room, go!" Amy quickly dragged her bags into the room and closed the door, the last they saw of her was her terrified face as the door closed.

* * *

In the morning, it appeared that while she had done something about the reek of sex, Amy had either become braver or forgotten what was said the night before, because she started telling them what _her_ rules were for this apartment, until the looks the other three gave her almost made her have to go and change her panties, because these were scary bitches! She didn't appreciate it when she asked what was for breakfast and Carina said. "Whatever you make for yourself, just be sure to clean up after yourself or else!" This wasn't looking like the sweet gig she'd been told it would be at all!

At the Embassy, the new Station Chief proved to be a sleazy political appointment who was apparently harbouring fantasies of a sexy spy harem as he leered at them. Sarah, Carina and Zondra were all dressed in attractive but businesslike skirt suits. Amy, however, was in a rather short, tight cocktail dress. When she came out wearing that and five inch stilettos, Zondra had told her rather bluntly that she looked like a whore and to go and get changed into something businesslike. Unfortunately, when they checked her clothes after she whined that this and evening gowns were the only sort of things she had, they found she was telling the truth, so as they didn't have time to get her anything decent before the meeting, they had to go in with her looking like a hooker and fuelling the slug of a Station Chief's fantasies. They swore that she'd be getting herself a more suitable wardrobe before they went back to the apartment.

The meeting was an endless string of good news/bad news scenarios. They started out with the news that the four of them were the only permanent members of the team, no guys. Amy pouted at that but the other three breathed a sigh of relief. Then he took great delight in telling them the clever name that he'd helped select for the team, the Clandestine Attack Team Squad, the CAT Squad! While Amy tittered at that, the looks he was getting the other three made him hastily move things along, how could women that gorgeous be so scary?

This was how the meeting went for over an hour before he brought out their first mission details to instruct them how to carry it out. Director Graham had given him strict instructions about how to handle this lot, especially that uppity blonde bitch. He told them that the men they were going after were too highly placed to disappear, so the usual tactics he'd been told about for two of them would not be condoned. He then went on to tell them that they would gain the targets' confidence by becoming their live-in girlfriends and doing whatever they said, so that once they had gotten themselves properly established inside the organisation they would be able to feed any intel they obtained back out through the other agents that he'd have in place for that purpose.

He thought that they were taking this better than he'd told to expect, not realising that three of the women in front of him were ready, willing and _quite_ able to rip him apart and ensure that his death was a quite long and excruciatingly painful process at that moment. Sarah just looked sat him and calmly said. "No."

He exploded. "What do you mean, 'No'? Don't you _ever_ try to talk back to me! You work for me and you will do exactly what I tell you to do! I've been told all about you and I can assure you that I won't put up with any of your antics girl!"

She smiled grimly at him. "Oh, you've been told all about us, have you? I don't think so. Do you have any _actual_ agents with real experience attached to this station?"

"Of course! This is the premier station for all of Europe!"

"I rather doubt that, but be that as it may, go and ask those agents about the Ice Queen…." She paused and glanced at Zondra. "And il Martello di Dio."

"You don't give me orders girl! I can see that what I was told about your insolence was only half of it, you will do exact….."

The look she gave him when she cut him off with. "Do it…. _ **Now**_!" loosened his bowels and he scurried out of the room to get the Hell away from that suddenly terrifying bitch.

This creature wasn't what had been described to him, so while he was out of the room he did as she said and asked the agents attached to the station about the two names that she'd said. What he was told left him white and shaking, what was that bastard Graham trying to do to him? The agents hadn't known much about 'il Martello di Dio', but the few stories they did have were frightening. They had plenty of stories about the Ice Queen though and _they_ were totally terrifying! On Graham's word, he'd been looking into the face of death and ordering her to become some cheap drug trafficker's fuck toy. How was he going to get out of this with his balls….Fuck that, how was he going to get out of this _alive_!

He was still white when he went back into his office, and he refused to look them in the eye as he apologised profusely and said that the information he'd been given on them was wildly inaccurate and the instructions given on how to deal with them had been totally inappropriate. Sarah cut in and asked what in fact he'd been told and he flinched as he said that he'd been told that she was just an uppity bitch with delusions of grandeur so he had to show her who was boss and force her into submitting to whatever he said.

He pissed himself at the menace in her chill voice when she spoke after that. "Well you know better than to try that _now_ , don't you _Station Chief?_ " He responded with an ardent. "Yes! Yes Miss Truffaut, I won't speak to you..." When he saw two of the others react to that he amended his words. "I won't ever speak to _any_ of you like that again!"

Sarah, Carina and Zondra looked at each other as they realised that he had only ever referred to them by their cover names for this assignment, so Sarah asked to see all the files on them and their mission rather firmly. He wasn't about to cross her now so he scurried over to the safe to grab all of the files and bring them back.

Amy was stewing when the other three women ignored her as they went through the files, other than to slap her hand away rather forcefully when she went to grab one of the files.

When the redhead looked up and asked the Station Chief. "These are all the files?" he leapt to assure her that they were, he might not have heard any direct confirmation that she was as dangerous as those other two bitches, but the look of her said that she was.

He watched the three bitches of the apocalypse silently communicating, then the blonde handed the files on the four of them back to him. The fact that there was no names mentioned other than the cover names they'd been assigned for this team meant that there was nothing that could be used against them in there, so they were happy for him to hold onto them. Then she waved at the mission files.

"We'll take these so that we can plan and execute our missions properly Station Chief. We will advise you when we are moving on the targets, when we need assistance, and the outcomes when we are successful. I strongly suggest that you don't tell Director Graham anything about us other than the outcome of our missions, and don't listen to anything else he may say about us. Director Graham obviously has an issue with me at least and has apparently attempted to turn this into a punishment assignment for me. As I believe you now understand, it would be a very bad idea for you to attempt to assist him in this."

They wound up the meeting at that and went to gather the intel and equipment they needed from the Station personnel.

Amy wasn't an idiot, she knew as well as the Station Chief that there was a lot that Graham hadn't told her about these women she'd been sent in here to spy on and sabotage, and that most of what he _had_ told her had obviously been lies, so she asked the agents about the two names that Sarah (she wasn't about to ask for a surname) had told the Station Chief to ask about. What she was told terrified her, because she'd apparently been sent in here to undermine a group of women who'd killed more people than the plague!

She wasn't about to do anything actively against them, not knowing what they really were, but she couldn't afford to openly go against Graham either. He'd told her what he'd done to one female agent who tried to defy him about five years ago, and as much as she loved sex, being forced into _that_ , over and over on every mission…. no, she had to be careful how she handled this….

November 2001 – The Farm

Larkin was furious, he'd shown them on the missions he did after 9/11 that he was a real agent, he'd done a damned sight better than the so-called experienced agents he'd been working with, if he did say so himself, but they just sent him straight back here to go back into training when they were done. They even marked his record with some shit about failing to show proper respect to the fallen.

He knew he wasn't handling this as well as he could have, he was doing pretty good at the physical aspects of the training, at least matching any of the other recruits, but it was never good enough in the eyes of the trainers….

He shook his head at that, he _definitely_ should have done his homework before he tried to work the trainers who thought they were alpha males the same way he had the Professors at Stanford. If he had he would have known that offering sexual favours to men in this environment was as good as putting your head on the chopping block.

Even if they _were_ inclined that way, they weren't about to allow any chance of that getting out in an environment like this, so all it got him was repeated beatings if anyone thought that he'd looked at them the wrong way. He probably would have had a fatal accident if the word hadn't come down that he was someone's Golden Boy who was slated for something important, so he was just mockingly referred to as 'the Queen' whenever other recruits couldn't hear and subjected to beatings whenever they felt like it.

That was something else that he couldn't understand, no matter how well he'd done, the trainers would just laugh at him and tell him that he hadn't matched the 'other Queen' and to go again. He wanted to tell them to fuck off, but straining to do better generally hurt less than the beating he'd get for talking back. But the thing was, if they reviled him for being a Queen, why did they all appear to _revere_ this other 'Queen'?

One thing was obvious though, he wasn't going to get through this and get to Project Omaha if he played the game by their rules, so he revised his plan and started working the administration staff at the Farm. Even they had to be handled a lot more carefully than anyone at Stanford though, because they'd seen plenty of others trying to work a way around the system, so he had to move slowly to avoid giving the game away. Not that there was any great hurry, because the only news that ever came through from Project Omaha was that there were more delays.

Bryce had another incentive to get through this though, because he'd been contacted by someone who knew he was the Omaha Candidate with an offer. From what Fleming had told him, being the successful Omaha Candidate would put him at the top of the food chain as an agent, he'd live the high life, all those other bastards would bow down to him and he could have any of those beautiful female agents he'd been drooling over, from then on, the only cock getting sucked would be _his_!

While that sounded pretty good though, this other offer from a private organisation was far better. They were offering him ten million up front and anything he asked for if he brought them the result of Project Omaha once it had successfully been loaded into him. Let those other saps worship God and country, his loyalty was to Bryce Larkin! So he hadn't needed any time to think it over, he'd promised to contact them as soon as he had it loaded. Now he just had to get out of this damned spy school.

He had to make sure he wasn't caught, so it took him months to get the admins to the point where they'd agree to start modifying his records for him, and even then he couldn't afford to take anything but small steps, he'd have to get to the point where he was close enough to passing a given course before they put in a passing grade for him into the system, and then some time after that he'd get them to amend the results to show that he'd smashed it. He couldn't find out who this other Queen that the trainers were measuring him against was, so he had to make guesses about how high to push his scores to show on paper at least that he'd beaten him, without making them so high that alarm bells went off. The trainers just presumed that the powers that be were getting impatient and progressed the Queen as soon as he improved enough to get through, because they knew that he had actually passed their courses and in fact surpassed most of the other recruits with the extra motivation they'd given him by then, they were just using the expectation that he outperform the Ice Queen to punish the little bastard, to make him keep chasing a standard that they knew he could never achieve.

The non-physical courses were at once both easier and harder, some he got through OK, others he struggled in, but it was easier to seduce people into giving him passing grades for them, and then he'd get the admins to alter the scores to what he believed he deserved.

All up, it took Larkin eighteen months to get through the farm and show something like the scores that were expected of him. Some of the people running the farm knew for a fact that the little tool hadn't earned the scores that had been recorded for him but, much like the trainers, they just presumed that someone above them had organised it so that their 'Golden Boy' looked good coming out of the Farm. Truth be told, they all just wanted to be shot of him, so they didn't say anything. Their parting words might have been congratulatory, but Larkin was bright enough to get the message never to come back.

Larkin didn't care! He was finally back on track, heading to Project Omaha to make his way to his rightful place on top of the heap.

November 2002 – Undisclosed Location for Project Omaha

While no-one would tell him where Project Omaha was based, from the uniforms and facilities there and what he'd seen from the plane, he was on a military base somewhere close to D.C. Larkin wasn't worried about that, as he was certain that he would have worked out a way to get word out to his friends when the time came.

What he was worried about though was that these _scientists_ wouldn't accept anything at face value and wanted to check everything (or rather, _confirm the results_ as they were so fond of saying). Luckily, they decided to first put him through months of training intended to maximise his image retention abilities as they still hadn't finalised the coding of the Intersect, as the program was apparently called, to their satisfaction.

As a result, he spent his days working on variations of Fleming's Subliminal Imagery module and other spy stuff, as well as exercising and sparring. Luckily he could hold his own as far as the athletics and sparring went and there was no scoring on the other lessons he was going through, so the only thing he had to worry about was the Subliminal Imagery crap. The way he saw it though was that they were giving him the means to get on top of this. If _Bartowski_ could have aced this test without any serious training, after all the exercises he was working through, he _must_ be able to top him.

After about four months of this, the scientists decided that they were ready to try Intersect tests, so they had Larkin do the Subliminal Imagery test again. When he only scored in the mid-eighties on the test, they wanted to know what the hell was going on, and made him do it over, and over, and over again. The best result he could get was in the high eighties, and that was just because he'd made some good guesses on the ones he had no idea about.

This of course lead to serious questions about the discrepancy in the results. The CIA went straight to Stanford to find out where Fleming was and drag him in to explain, but the people at Stanford swore that they had no idea where he went after he left in 2001, so the CIA started searching for him electronically. The very few people at Stanford who knew what had happened to their erstwhile professor were keeping tight lipped, because that Bartowski business had done them enough damage, if it ever got out how many students Fleming had used falsified records and the promise of assistance to pressure into providing sexual favours to him over the years, they'd be ruined! The number of _underaged_ students that Fleming had preyed on made it even worse, because he seemed to have liked the young ones even more. Special Agent Harris had handed over copies of all of the recordings and altered records for all the students that Fleming had scammed into having sex with him over a two and a half year period, and the university people were horrified. To be fair, some of them _were_ horrified at what Fleming had been doing, but others were only thinking about what would happen to them if the families of those and other students ever found about it.

As a result, George Fleming had been buried in prison, with a 'clerical error' altering his name enough to ensure that he wasn't found. He was supposed to be in there for long enough for any of the students he'd preyed on to be long gone and then released, but some of the other prisoners had overheard the people from Stanford shouting at him about forcing underage girls to have sex with him and word quickly got around the prison that he was a child molester. Men in prison appear to hate child molesters more than anyone, possibly because they can't protect their own children from them while they're locked away, and that made Fleming a target. He was shivved to death about three months after he got there and cremated under the name that he was in there as, so George Fleming was gone and the CIA would get no answers from him.

When they couldn't find Fleming, and no matter how many SI tests he did, Larkin couldn't get higher than the mid to high eighties, they looked into the reasons for his score dropping. They debated whether the year and a half of intensive training at the Farm may have caused it, but that idea was discarded when it was pointed out that he'd been out of that for over four months. In the end, it was the lies that he and his family had made up to get him out of Stanford before the truth could catch up to him that was accepted as the answer, because they'd gotten doctors' reports to say that multiple blows to the head with some sort of blunt object had caused head trauma and that was why he was being rushed back East for specialised treatment.

The neurologists that Project Omaha consulted argued that head trauma could indeed result in the lower results that they were seeing here, so they sat down to debate whether they should proceed or not. The Omaha scientists argued that if the candidate had the capacity, they should load the Intersect and do what they could to get it working. Graham and other senior CIA people on the other hand looked at the humungous investment that they now had in Larkin (especially if you included the two years' that Project Omaha had been pushing to get the Intersect working for him) and his results from the Farm, which were outstanding on paper at least, and overruled the scientists. The decision was made to send Larkin into the field and make use of his exceptional skills, in hope of getting some value out of the investment they had in him.

So, in March 2003, Bryce Larkin became Director Graham's newest field agent Golden Boy.

 **A/N: 9/11 was a surreal experience for me as while I wasn't in America, I _was_ working for a large American corporation that was rather unpopular in the region that the attackers were presumed to be from, and as the people responsible for physical security in the company couldn't be found, I had to handle it. **

**When I first saw the news, I actually believed that someone had made up something to get the same effect as the panic that Orson Wells created with his War of the Worlds radio broadcast, because I couldn't accept that it was real, but unfortunately it _was_ real.**

 **I was lucky I guess, as the serious impact on me only lasted a day, the big bosses backed up all the calls I'd made when no-one else would, I didn't lose anyone I knew over there and my world went back to normal afterwards, but I doubt if I'll ever forget that day.**

 **NB: According to GT, "il Martello di Dio" means "The Hammer of God".**

 **BTW: Yes, the funny experimental helicopter/plane things are V22 Ospreys, they were doing military trials for nearly twenty years before they were accepted, and helicopter drones weren't common usage until well after that.**


	4. Out Of The Frying Pan

**Usual disclaimers. No rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.**

May 2004 – Paris

Over the two past years, the CAT Squad had managed to shock many people in the world's intelligence communities with what they had achieved. Even though Langston Graham and his cohorts had tried to cover it up and deflect credit for what they were doing to other people and groups that they controlled, enough senior people in the intelligence agencies _saw_ their achievements and knew who was responsible. It was actually Graham's man, the CIA Station Chief in Paris, who had come up with the tag that the serious people in the intelligence communities of the world knew them by though, because he whined so much about the Three Bitches of the Apocalypse that everyone heard, and it was taken up as an accolade rather than the derogatory term it was originally coined as.

Even though they were officially CAT Squad only, they (primarily Sarah, but Carina and Zondra too at times) were given side missions as well, so Sarah was still maintaining the top mission count in the CIA. The problem was that these side missions usually involved cleaning up Graham's messes, assassinate someone here, bring someone back into the fold there, seduce intel he wanted out of someone, so Sarah acquired another name, Graham's Enforcer.

What little down time they had was usually spent clubbing, or relaxing on the beach somewhere on the Mediterranean or in South America . They generally went as a group, except when Carina and Amy were going off picking up guys of course. When those two picked up guys to go home with, Sarah and Zondra would usually just head back to the apartment. At first Sarah had thought that Zondra might bat for the same team, because she never paid any attention to men beyond evaluating them as threats, but when she asked one night when they'd been drinking, Zondra just said that she'd met _very_ few men who could be trusted, so she wasn't about to consider them anything but a threat until she believed that she could.

That told Sarah that she had had an event in her past that was traumatic enough to utterly destroy her trust in men, but she kept it to herself, because they all had their demons. For that matter, Sarah _knew_ that it must have been something that happened in the four years since she left the Farm that was behind Carina's need to always find a guy to sleep with, because she hadn't been having those screaming nightmares she had all too often now when they were back at the Farm, but Carina wasn't ready to tell her about that, not even when she was holding her to get her out of them. Working out Amy on the other hand was easy, she was just a slut.

Amy served nothing more than a support function on the team, because there was no way that she could ever measure up to the ability and experience of her three team mates or be trusted with anything critical. Whatever slant Graham and everyone else tried to put on it to depict them all as bimbos who were of little use for anything other than seduction missions though, Sarah, Zondra and even Carina had solid reputations with the men on the ground, and people knew what these three remarkable women had achieved. Even ordinary agents listened when the men of the elite Special Operations units gave respect to anyone outside their units, and it was made clear that those three _were_ respected by those men.

That was why when the CATS started, it was mainly the men who operated at the sharp end who knew of Carina as anything other than the disposable fuck toy that the DEA generally used her as, because the people who had her sent on the missions that Graham wanted her on didn't bother looking into what she actually did, and the ones who organised the missions weren't about to do anything to aggravate those above them, so they just kept sending her out as ordered. Most ordinary agents had never gotten to talk to the Special Ops elite who recounted tales of what a force of nature this woman could be in combat because they never operated at that level, but she did. While she was part of the CATS though, the Special Ops guys let others know the name that Carina was known as to them, the Red Menace. To be sure, that name referred to a lot more than just her combat abilities, but in no way lessened the respect they had for her and they dealt with anyone who used the more common derogatory name of 'Man Eater' for her quite harshly because _that_ was not a name that was used with any respect intended at all.

In general, Graham and the people who sided with him tried to paint the CATS as nothing more than the Man Eater that most saw Carina as and the Bimbo that Amy was, but the people who the intelligence services relied on knew the truth of the matter.

* * *

In the early months of 2004, things started to go wrong for the CATS, because they started finding the places they were hitting empty, or worse, with an ambush waiting. The team was heading up a major task force made up of agencies from around Europe and the US to take down an organisation known as the Gentle Hand by then, so at first the suspicion was directed at the other people on the task force. That suspicion appeared to be substantiated when Amy, of all people, supposedly caught out two men who were attached to the task force's Milan base with suspicious deposits to their accounts. Unfortunately, as the person on the scene, she'd interrogated the two men herself and they both died before Sarah, Carina or Zondra, who were the CATS' experienced interrogators, could get there. They had questions about the whole 'finding the traitors and have them die under questioning' thing, but her excuses were believable and those deposits in the men's accounts made a compelling argument, so they accepted her version of the events.

They realised that those two men had not been the only source of the betrayals (if indeed they had been involved at all) though when the failed missions showed no sign of diminishing. Someone else had to be the traitor and they needed to track them down before they lost too many more men. This of course made them look at Amy more closely, and Sarah's best CIA tech connection recommended a NSA hacker who was far better than anyone else he knew to trace back any records and get proof of her guilt, the Piranha.

Sarah didn't know how Tommy had managed to get an elite NSA hacker to agree to do a job for the CIA, but she wasn't about to argue, because the guy came back with results faster than she would have thought humanly possible, and had dug deeper than she had expected as well. What this Piranha found was that, as well as the extremely large deposits into Amy's accounts on an off-shore tax haven just after every major betrayal of the team, another account had been set up in Zondra's name with less money going into it, but the amounts going into that account were still big enough to be believable to be payoffs for the traitor on the team.

Zondra went ballistic when she found out that she was being set up to take the fall for this and wanted to kill Amy, but they convinced her to hold out for a bit so that they could bring the traitorous bimbo down. It was Carina who pointed out that they wouldn't have stopped at the fake accounts, they would have almost certainly planted other evidence as well, so with that they went through everything in Zondra's room with a fine toothed comb. They found what they were looking for hidden in the heel of one of a pair of boots that Amy had 'borrowed' from her months ago and Zondra hadn't realised had been returned.

The incriminating evidence was a miniature transmitter that they knew would prove to be how the Gentle Hand had been notified of where they were going to be raiding next. They hastily called in support from the SOG and other Special Ops groups that they knew they could rely on for their next raid, because planting the transmitter on Zondra said that the Gentle Hand were setting up a final confrontation.

* * *

The warehouse that they were hitting on that raid was massive, and Sarah, Carina and Zondra had to work to keep their apprehension about the fact that they knew that they were walking into a massive trap from showing. As soon as they and the know support team were inside, that trap was sprung, but the force that targeted them was far bigger than anything they had expected. Amy disappeared as they all dove for cover and called for reinforcements.

They lost a quarter of their support team before they even reached cover, and with the other side well emplaced all over the warehouse and up in the rafters, they kept losing more of their people as they couldn't find cover that would protect them from all the angles the shots were coming from.

As soon as she thought that there was no way that her team mates could escape, Amy started taunting them. "How does it feel to know that stupid, useless little Amy outsmarted all of you, you fucking bitches?" They all confirmed that they were recording this. "You bitches have taken all the glory and made me into no more than your gofer the entire time we've been working together, but now _I'm_ calling the shots! I guess I should thank you Zondra, if you hadn't sent me to Milan to be your delivery girl back in February, I wouldn't have met Augusto. That meeting changed my life, because now I've got myself a man who is strong enough to protect me from both you lot _and_ Graham! I didn't have to think twice when he asked me to help him bring you down because of the damage you were doing to his organisation, and I've told the Gentle Hand about every raid you had planned since then." She actually _giggled_ when she paused. "Oh I'm sorry, I meant to say that _Zondra_ told them about all your raids, you see the evidence of that is all over the place, so all of your wonderful _friends_ will be spitting on your grave after this Zee. It's such a pity that _my_ body was totally obliterated in an explosion, but I'm sure I'll enjoy the hero's funeral that I'll be getting, along with Red and Blondie. Speaking of which, it will be better for you two if you don't make Augusto's boys kill you, you see they've been quite looking forward to having fun with you before you die, so they'll do unspeakable things to your bodies if you deny them their fun. After all, they can't do too much to Zee before she dies after she's been working with them now, can they? No, her body has to be found full of bullets from one of your guns because after you realised that she was the traitor, you shot her yourself."

The battle was raging all around them all the while that Amy was going through her diatribe, and the fighting was heavy enough that the Gentle Hand didn't realise that it wasn't shots from the warehouse floor that were taking out their snipers in the rafters, it was other snipers from outside the building. The Gentle Hand's forces only started to realise that something wasn't going their way when _they_ started to get picked off by snipers from the rafters, and then another force broke in through the main doors of the warehouse. The ones who had laid the trap for the CAT Squad knew what Augusto Gaez would do to them and their families if they failed to carry out his orders, so as soon as the new force burst into the warehouse they charged the ones they'd been sent here to eliminate.

Just before the new teams burst into the warehouse, Amy had worked herself up so much in her taunting of Zondra and the others that she stepped out from behind cover so that she could see their reactions. The M4 in Sarah's hands was no sniper rifle, but at the hundred or so yards distance between her and Amy, it may as well have been, because the full auto burst she released at her blew her head Amy's head apart.

That was when the Gentle Hand charged them, and Sarah realised that she'd just about emptied her last mag for the M4 on Amy because the bolt stayed open after the very next shot. She dropped the M4 and engaged her attackers with her S&W but she knew that the situation was hopeless, until one of the men who'd just broken into the warehouse charged in front of her and engaged the ones who were heading for her. He took a lot of hits, but he took them all out before he collapsed. The rest of the Gentle Hand's people were down in minutes but the medics had dragged him behind cover and were working to stabilise him by then. When Sarah went to make sure that her saviour was still alive, he smiled up at her and but didn't get out more than. "Sam..." before he passed out.

The medics and officers assured her that they'd let her know how Agent Mills was doing, but they had to get him into surgery immediately it they wanted to have any chance of saving him. With that, she almost pushed them out the door.

That news about Agent Mills took a while to get to her, because the CAT Squad operation was cancelled immediately and they were recalled to D.C. to face the inquiry over what happened. When she arrived back in the States, she was surprised by a call from Tommy to say that his friend had heard about what happened and had moved the money from those accounts in the tax haven to another one that the team could use to get away if this inquiry went bad. Tommy also passed on a package of information which showed Amy's trail of activities from when she was contacted by the Gentle Hand in February up until she died in the trap she'd help set for the rest of the team.

Graham and his cronies were rather angry when the other agencies who the team had worked with in Europe and South America insisted in being involved in the inquiry, citing their knowledge of the activities leading up to the final battle and the loss of _their_ operatives in the task force's clashes with the Gentle Hand to force the point. Many people sitting on the inquiry were quite bemused about Graham's outright refusal to accept, or even consider, Amy as the traitor. His position was easier to understand when he finally admitted that she had been his plant on the team to watch the others, but the other agencies didn't let up on hammering the overwhelming evidence that it was _his_ person on the team who was the traitor.

June 2004 – Washington D.C.

In the end, due to Graham's power and the support of his cronies in the DEA and FBI, the other agencies couldn't stop him breaking up the CAT Squad so that Sarah, Carina and Zondra were all reassigned with black marks on their records for failing to spot the traitor they had been working and living with almost twenty four seven.

Carina went back to the same type of missions she'd been doing before for the DEA where her skills on her back were more used than anything else (though she had more support from the other agents at least after what had come out during her year on the CAT Squad). When Zondra went back to the FBI, Graham's cronies got her stuck on much lower profile cases than she'd been handling before, so her career development was pushed back by several years. Sarah was dreading what Graham would come up with for her, and what she got was as bad as she expected.

* * *

Bryce had learned his lesson at the Farm, so as soon as he was assigned to be a field agent, he started cultivating the administrative staff, because _they_ were the ones who could make him look good. Whenever he was in D.C. he worked overtime to keep the office staff happy (which of course meant screwing them senseless), so that in turn they would ensure that the reports on file for any missions he was associated with cast him in a very good light.

Graham didn't really give two hoots about what sort of agent Larkin was, so long as his performance was good enough to provide justification for the size of the investment they had in him. The problem was, while his mission reports all showed him as a great agent, the scales were rather light on the side of showing tangible benefits accruing from his missions.

As he happened to be reviewing Larkin's file while they were winding up the inquiry into what happened with the CAT Squad, Graham came up with an idea. Given that Walker's ledger was the strongest of any agent in the CIA in terms of what she'd brought to the Agency in comparison to what it had cost to train her, there was no-one better to make Larkin's ledger look more acceptable. Walker's ranking would take a hit while improving Larkin's, but that suited Graham just fine, it would just give him an excuse to keep her away from assignments that might let her build herself up any more than she was now.

Any sane person would have been disturbed by the evil smile that grew on Graham's face as he considered another aspect of this. Larkin was arguably the worst in the CIA (some thought the United States) in considering himself God's gift to women, and men if the rumours were true, so he'd screw anything that stayed still long enough. Walker had been aggravating him for seven years now with her refusals to screw who he told her to. Yes, she'd shown the results to prevent him from punishing her for that so far, but this could well be his chance to finally force her compliance.

Graham put together his plan fairly quickly. Yes, a mission within a mission, that's it! They suspected Larkin's loyalty and he had some of the CIA's most critical information in his head. They _had_ to know whether he could be trusted with those secrets, as the security of the nation was at stake. The investment to create him as the top agent they had and his family's connections were too much to eliminate him without proof, so her job was to get close enough to him to get that proof. That should work hopefully, because with the way Larkin's mind worked there was no way she would be able to get close to him _without_ sex. With any luck, after being plowed by Larkin for a year or so, maybe she'd loosen up on the sex thing and do what she was told, the stories about Larkin said that he was almost as good as he thought he was in that respect at least, so they may be able to get _some_ value out of all those millions they spent on him that way.

When Walker and Larkin were called in to be told that, as the CIA's best agents, they would be working together, Larkin wasn't making any attempt to cover up what was on his mind as he looked at his new partner, in fact Graham was surprised he wasn't humping her leg. Walker, on the other hand, was the consummate professional she always was, though Graham didn't miss the fact that her hand never strayed too far from her leg where reports said she usually carried some of her knives.

Graham asked Walker to stay back when the meeting with the pair of them was done, implying it was about her previous assignment. She got the point straight away about what he was demanding of her and refused, but he laid out all of the arguments that he'd been polishing ever since he came up with the concept for this, and finished with her biggest weak point. The techs had compiled a number of images which had been made up to show the best approximation of what her mother should look like now, but all of them were obscured just enough to prevent getting a clear look at her face and he threw them across the desk at her. "If you don't care about your country or the Agency, do you care enough about your mother to do your duty? If would be a shame to eliminate the best analyst and planner the CIA ever had, but if you refuse to do your duty, she will pay the price."

It was very similar to when he'd used this against her before she started with the CAT Squad, Sarah was tight lipped and emotionless as she slowly nodded to say that she understood, but Graham could read in her eyes that she'd kill him for this if she ever had the chance. He tried not to let the shiver of fear that passed through him at that look show, but he made a mental note to upgrade his protective detail.

Larkin was waiting outside when she left Graham's office, and he all but pounced on her, and he was about as subtle as a fart in a phone booth when he insisted that they should have dinner and then spend some _quality_ time getting to know each other if they were going to be working together. For all of the extensive training he had been given at the Farm and while he was at Stanford though, Larkin didn't pick up on the fact that she'd brushed him off like any other mark. Her first stop was Jane Bentley, because she needed someone to cry and vent to, and Jane was the only person in D.C. that she trusted enough to do that with.

* * *

Between her connections and holding down the Assistant to the DDO's position for nearly six years (she'd _finally_ been formally made the Deputy Director of Operations when Graham stepped up to become the Director of the CIA the previous month), Jane knew more about the agents in the CIA than anyone else, and she knew that there was a marked difference between the reports on file for Larkin's missions, and what agents who were _on_ those missions reported. What she told Sarah about other agents being abandoned and sold out when they were working with Larkin didn't do anything to make Sarah feel any better, though the reports that Agent Mills was stable and was expected to make a full recovery in time did.

They agreed that there was nothing that Sarah could do to get out of this, so the best she could do was try to get the intel that Graham wanted while keeping Larkin at arm's reach as much as she could. Jane was also quite aware of Larkin's reputation of trying to screw any woman he met, but Sarah had worked that out from the fifteen minutes they'd been in Graham's office and the fact that he'd slept with both Carina and the Bimbo on one of the CATS missions in South America that he'd been involved in, so she knew that she probably wasn't going to get out of it without having sex with the pig, all she could do was try to keep that to an absolute minimum.

Sarah managed to avoid spending much time with Larkin before they left on their first assignment by using the excuse that she was running around, trying to catch up on all the things she hadn't been able to deal with for the two years that she hadn't been to the US as she'd been based out of Europe. She also managed to use the 'you know as an experienced agent that we need our rest to be on top of the operation' card to get them allocated separate beds unless they were on a high visibility mission where that would have telegraphed the issues, but even so, she had to follow through and have sex with him two months into the assignment to carry out her 'mission within the mission'.

That was when she got the confirmation that Graham had just set this assignment up to force her to sleep with Larkin, because when she went to him with proof that Larkin _would_ sell out the Agency and the country if he was offered enough, but he didn't know anything that was worth selling, Graham just insisted that she hadn't delved deep enough to be certain of that and refused to let her out of the assignment.

So she had to go back to work with Larkin and hold off his advances as subtly as possible. In a way, the fact that Graham kept sending her off on solo missions between the 'Andersons' missions was good for her, because it meant that she wasn't having to spend that time fighting Larkin off.

That bolt hole that the Piranha had set up for them was awfully tempting, but Graham was still holding Mama's safety over her head, and if any one of them needed that more than the rest, it was Carina. She and Zondra had been horrified when Carina finally broke down and told them about the missions that gave her nightmares nearly every night, unless she had someone to hold her. They couldn't believe that she would go back to that after they broke up the CATS, but she insisted that it wasn't as bad as it had been before, because the serious agents had listened to the Special Ops guys and they did what they could to reduce those aspects on missions that they were on. She also pointed out that Graham would throw his resources behind hunting her down if she left, so everything had to be bullet proof before she tried. She did promise that if it got too much for her, she'd run, but until then, she insisted that they leave the bolt hole there and try and build the money and the other resources that they'd need up for all of them.

Between them, they established safe houses and caches of what they'd need around the world. With their backgrounds and how they'd been forced into the CIA by Graham, Sarah and Carina had already been getting money together and building the frameworks for this before they came back together in the CATS, so they built on these, also creating pipelines they could all use to get in or out of the States without being seen.

One thing that they'd done with the assistance of Tommy and the other techs who they could trust (Tommy said that even the Piranha had helped on some parts) was to create secure, untraceable communications mechanisms so that they could get in touch with each other in case anything happened. Sarah used some of the mechanisms that her mother had set up for her to keep in touch as the framework for this, but she added redundancy so that they wouldn't lose touch due to a simple problem like the one that made her lose touch with Mama.

The most amazing part was the bit that Tommy said the Piranha had done, because they all had ordinary looking phones that would work anywhere cell phones would work around the world, but only if the right keys were input, so if anyone else tried to use them, they acted like ordinary phones. They also had extras of these hidden in their safe houses and caches around the world so that they could get replacements if they were lost or broken on a mission. This was part of what helped Carina keep going, because being able to talk to Sarah and Zondra when she needed to helped keep the demons at bay.

May 2004 – Pasadena Ca

When Tommy had contacted the Piranha about helping some operatives who were in a bind, there was no question that Chuck would help, because even though they worked for his Aunt, he, Casey and Ellie had been backed into corners by traitors before and he knew what it felt like to be hung out to dry. The problem was how to do it without his rule loving Aunt finding out. Chuck didn't believe that his Aunt had _ever_ done anything other than what she was told, even when she'd added Jeff and Anna to the team rather than bury them in a black site somewhere, she was being told what to do, though it was by Chuck those times. So Chuck had to get this done without her knowing, but luckily he could show her at least 80% of what he was doing, and she still wouldn't have a clue.

Once he had dug out and supplied the financial information they needed, he stopped to think about the position that they were in, and decided to dig deeper, because they were going to need extra proof when the shit hit the fan, so he started back tracking from the point where Amy's accounts were set up until he had communications log evidence of when she started talking to the Gentle Hand people, then he turned around and followed the trail from there to the end, collecting evidence of all electronic communications and any indications he could find of physical communications as well. When Tommy (or Khan as he was known in hacker circles) told him that the agents were being dragged back to the US to come before an inquiry that was sounding more like a witch hunt, Chuck cleaned out the accounts that had been set up, as well as the account that the funds had come from, and set up a new account at a different tax haven to transfer the money into, sending all of the access details to them via Tommy so that they had resources available in case they had to break and run.

Chuck's interest was piqued in these agents, so he looked them up, but he couldn't find any references at all to Rosalia Zambetti, Anja Lundgren or Elana Truffaut other than in connection with this CAT Squad that they were on. That was part of the reason he agreed to help when Tommy asked him about unobtrusive, unbreakable and untraceable communications devices that would work just about anywhere, because he knew it was for them and he was intrigued. The challenge of creating something that most thought was impossible was the rest of it, and in the end he needed to get his Dad's help to get them working the way he wanted.

Afterwards Dr Dreyfus actually asked him to come up with more challenges like that to stretch his father, because getting into the challenge to make the phone deliver what Chuck was after had kept Stephen lucid for two weeks, which was the longest contiguous period he'd managed in the last twelve years.

* * *

The family did have a bigger worry through this period though, making sure that Bry would live and nursing him back to health. He had come far too close to dying when he saved that woman from the CAT Squad in the Warehouse Battle, and his initial adamant statements that he was certain that he'd seen Sammie, from her resemblance to Emma when she was young, earned him a pile of brain scans because Ellie was worried about _why_ he was imagining these things. People who'd dealt with the CAT Squad said that Elana Truffaut was a tall, beautiful blonde woman in her early twenties, so they just put it down to him seeing her when he was saving her and getting mixed up between the pain and drugs and near death experience afterwards.

What they really couldn't work out though was why Bry never give up on that shallow bitch of a wife of his until she really shafted him. He had come back, a hero and almost dead from his wounds (why the intelligence community had had to fight, and eventually use the inquiry as the medium to shame Graham into granting him the Distinguished Intelligence Cross for that was another bone of contention), and all she did was say. "I can't take this any more." and divorced him, taking their daughter Kim away from him. The fact that Lenore was remarried to a sleazy businessman within a month and a half said that she'd already been screwing him while officially 'separated' from Bry (and probably before that, truth be told), but that wasn't the worst of what she did, the worst was how she and her new husband did their best to stop Kim from seeing her father while he was recovering.

There was no doubt that Kim was her father's daughter, because she usually found a way to slip out and get to see Bry. When they found that her stepfather had forcibly restrained her one time he caught her slipping out, he got a visit from a furious Ellie and Casey. Ellie told him on no uncertain terms what she would do to him if he _ever_ laid hands on her honorary cousin, or tried to stop her seeing her _father_ ever again, and the coward was so afraid of her that he called 911.

His smug smile as the place was swamped with police cars due to his 'donations' to the local County Sheriff quickly disappeared when Casey and Ellie produced their FBI IDs and paperwork to show that they were there to look into the complaints of inappropriate handling and false imprisonment that were reported by his teenaged stepdaughter Kim Mills, who he was trying to stop go see her war hero father in hospital. That changed everything, because it didn't matter what the Sheriff had told them about looking after this 'very important businessman', there were enough fathers, divorced fathers and veterans among the police who responded to turn the tide then and there.

The police demanded to talk to Kim and when they heard what she had to say, especially the fact that her mother had divorced her father when he came home shot to pieces and then married this sleaze just over month later, they told her stepfather the same thing Ellie had, and added that they'd be checking in with Kim regularly to make sure that she was OK. Kim's mother Lenore tried to say that these weren't real FBI agents, they were just friends of her ex-husband, but she realised that she'd screwed up as soon as Casey and Ellie turned around and _insisted_ that the police check up on them.

Once the police had confirmation that Casey and Ellie were indeed genuine FBI agents, Ellie decided to use this to get what Kim wanted after she had had a quiet word to her. With Kim's confirmation, Ellie and Casey pulled the officer in charge aside and got the police's agreement for them to take Kim into protective custody and their assistance to gather up whatever Kim wanted to take with her. By the end of the day, they had also lodged a submission on Bry's behalf for sole custody of Kim, with Emma, Ellie, Casey and Jeff standing in to care for and protect Kim until her father was on his feet again.

Lenore and Stewart, her new husband, fought the custody case in court of course, but they made the mistake of trying to argue that Bry would not be able to look after Kim properly because he was a CIA operative. Roan, in his Herman Goldstein guise as the family's lawyer, came back with the evidence that Bry had in fact been discharged from the Agency on medical grounds soon after his wife divorced him, and then turned the legal resources of the Federal Government loose on Lenore for breaching the agreements she'd signed guaranteeing that she'd never divulge any of the official secrets that she'd learned as the wife of a CIA field operative, because the fact that Bry _was_ a CIA field operative was one of the biggest secrets she'd been told. Needless to say, Bry won sole custody and Kim's request not to see her mother or stepfather was enforced with a restraining order against them.

* * *

There was a very good reason why Roan played a lawyer so often, that being the fact that Herman Goldstein the up and coming legal eagle was who he had been before he joined the CIA. He'd kept his bar qualifications up in a number of states around the country so that he could legally act as a lawyer when required and his skills at manipulating people made him an excellent lawyer, so he never lost a case. The law firm of Goldstein, Cohen and Marks might have be a fabrication, but Herman Goldstein wasn't.

It didn't take long for Kim to settle into the school in Arcadia that Ellie and Chuck had gone to once she'd moved into the house in Arcadia. Emma was listed as her primary care giver but Chuck, Ellie, Casey and Jeff (as her 'cousins' and 'uncles') normally dropped her off at the school and picked her up until Bry was up to doing it himself. The school had been worried that they were acting totally paranoid with the way they hovered over Kim, until Lenore and Stewart proved that they weren't by turning up at the school with 'guards' to try and take Kim back a couple of months after she started at the school. They all ended up in prison for that because what they did was demonstrably more of an organised kidnapping attempt than a breach of the restraining order.

Part of what helped Kim settle in was the fact that Casey's daughter Alex was close to her age and going to the same school. Kathleen and George (the man she'd married when Alex was two and a half) didn't have a lot of money, so when Casey asked if he could pay for Alex's education at the best schools that were close enough for her to stay at home, they'd readily agreed as this would be best for Alex. The fact that the schools in Arcadia were the best in California was a large part of the reason that Ellie, Chuck and Emma had been relocated there, so it was an easy choice to have her go there.

Since Chuck finished at Stanford and they moved back to Arcadia, much of Casey's time with Alex had been when he was dropping her off or picking her up from school, and if Casey couldn't, Chuck, Jeff, Emma or Ellie were always available. Having Casey and the family looking after Alex whenever they could had also given Kathleen the opportunity to go back to work full time again so that she could get her career back on track. This meant that after Kim joined the family, she and Alex spent a lot of time together and they got along great, so they quickly became best friends.

The only thing that tempered the family's enjoyment of how happy the two girls were were their thoughts of another girl Kim's age who they'd been looking for in vain for over ten years, ever since her mother found out that she hadn't died at birth as she'd been told, but rather she had been taken away at her father's orders to be raised by another woman. Ellie and Chuck were desperate to find their little sister, and the rest of the family were committed to finding her as well.

As soon as Bry was back on his feet, he joined Casey and the others at Shamrock Security (he worked with Charlemagne and Shiloh as well of course, but he was primarily part of Shamrock). He bitched and moaned at the way the rest of them enforced Ellie's instructions to ensure that he stayed on light duties, but he was bright enough to understand and accept that his healing would progress better if he followed Ellie's rules.

Quite aside from anything else, Chuck had been keeping up the image searches and references to the Ice Queen, Shanti or Graham's Enforcer. Around the middle of 2002, after she should have finished university, he got worried about how all the hits he was getting for the names Sammie was known by suddenly dried up, but after a few months references to the Ice Queen started popping up again, and then images started coming in from the spy satellites that were covering the more important parts of Europe, and he even started seeing references to Shanti and Graham's Enforcer from some ops. He was getting far fewer hits than he had been before, but he had evidence that she was still alive and presumably OK, so he'd take that.

This happened again two years later, but after that she was apparently being associated with an agent referred to as 'Graham's Golden Boy', which Chuck wasn't too happy about, because the references to _him_ weren't flattering at all.

* * *

Working with Larkin wasn't as bad as it could have been, well he never stopped coming onto her of course, and she knew that Graham had set up a few of their missions so that she couldn't avoid having sex with him because they were being watched by their targets, but he was quite capable as an agent as long as she did all of the planning and hard work and stopped him from going off script. That last was the hardest part, but Sarah had had two years experience of keeping Carina's improvisation in line, and compared to Carina Larkin was easy to handle.

The longer it got from when Graham had last set things up to force her to sleep with him, the worse he got though. He was screwing every woman he could the entire time, but he seemed to have it fixed in his head that it was his right as her partner and cover husband to have sex with her, so when she held him off he got quite argumentative and behaved like a petulant child on missions, pushing the displays of affection way beyond what was acceptable or believable and starting fights in public when she rejected him.

Early September 2005 – near Kharkiv, Ukraine

Matters finally came to a head on a mission in the Ukraine. It was supposed to be simple, get access via a party at a warlord's dacha and use the usual processes to explain a couple going off to find somewhere quiet for a bit of 'alone time' to get into the safe in the warlord's office. Once they'd snatched the intel they were sent for, they'd slip out, call for a retrieval and be out the country within a couple of hours, simple.

Of course, nothing is simple when Bryce Larkin thinks he can use the situation to get what he wants. Once again, he pushed the displays of affection far beyond anything that was acceptable in public and almost got them thrown out of the party when the other guests complained. That at least did give them the opportunity to find somewhere quiet, because it was obvious that they were going to have a massive fight and Sarah didn't have the feign her rage at his behaviour. Even the men at the party had been rooting for her as they'd been outraged at the way Larkin had been handling her like a common street whore in front of their partners, their wives for many of them. This was an insult to _them_ , and most of them were looking forward to extracting their own retribution on the pig later.

It took Sarah longer than it should have to get into the safe and get a copy of the intel that they were sent for, because Larkin wouldn't shut up about how she _had_ to come around and be his partner properly. He tried to blame her for all the issues that they'd had, claiming that she was constantly throwing him off balance by leading him on and then rejecting him at the last moment, as well as not going along with the displays of affection on missions.

Sarah tried to ignore him, because killing him like she desperately wanted to would blow the mission. As soon as she had the intel and everything was back the way it had been she took off, thinking that the only thing that was going her way was the fact that no-one in the dacha that night would question her storming away from the bastard, so if they were seen with him following her anyone would read it that way.

The problem was, Larkin even managed to screw that up, because when they were found and challenged by the guards because he wasn't keeping his voice down, he pulled out his pistol and opened fire on them so they both had to dive for cover. The ensuing firefight was fast and furious, and it was all Sarah could do to avoid being hit while she tried to thin out the numbers of the greatly superior and better armed force at the other end of the corridor, so she wasn't focussing on anything but them.

When she realised that she was more than halfway through her last magazine, she turned to ask Larkin whether he had a spare mag, but he was gone. A quick look over her shoulder caught him glancing back with a smug grin as he disappeared around the corner, and she knew that he had abandoned her to be killed by the guards.

She turned back to the guards, trying to pick the best moment for a good death, when there was a lull in the firing while a number of them were apparently changing mags. Sarah seized that opportunity to grab a small but powerful flash-bang grenade from her clutch purse, arm it and throw it at the guards at the other end of the corridor. The timing was perfect, as it went off just as the ones who had changed mags started firing again, so it hit them with maximum effect. Sarah had clapped her hands over her ears, closed her eyes tight and buried her face in her thighs as the grenade went off, and she had managed to block just enough of the effects for her to be able to keep her wits about her, grab her pistol and clutch purse and bolt (OK, stagger) off in the same direction Larkin had.

It only took one peek around the corner to confirm that Larkin had taken the car they came in and left her there, and she knew the guards would recover too quickly for her to be able to get a cab or steal a car, so she took off on foot. The hotel they were staying at was less than two kilometres away, but it took her well over half an hour to get there, because she had to take cover whenever the warlord's soldiers went past, which happened all too often for her liking.

When she finally reached the hotel, she saw their car parked in plain sight right at the front door and the warlord's soldiers carrying her bags out of the hotel, _only_ her bags. It was obvious what Larkin had done, he'd driven straight here, dumped the car right outside, grabbed his bags and called for extraction, so he would be on his way out of the country by now. The only question was whether he'd intentionally screwed her over and done his best to ensure that she got caught, or he was just covering his own arse and didn't give a shit what happened to her. Her memory of the look he'd shot her as he abandoned her told her that it was the former.

* * *

That was neither here nor there at the moment, she had to get out of there before anyone saw her, so she ran. As she crept through the dark back streets and lanes, trying to get as far as she could from the warlord's dacha and the hotel, she was evaluating her situation, and one of her first agendas was to get clothes that were less noticeable than the eye catching evening dress she was currently wearing. She checked the backyards as she passed, and managed to liberate clothes that fit her well enough and would blend in far better from a few clothes lines, she also lucked out in finding a pair of boots that fit her among the row of shoes that were lined up at the back door of one of the houses she passed.

Eventually she holed up in a cowshed on the edge of town, the evening dress, stilettos and clutch purse buried in garbage bins that she'd passed along the way. The contents of the clutch purse were spread through the pockets of the jacket she was wearing now, and it was when she was emptying the purse that she discovered that Larkin had managed to lift the device that she'd copied the mission data onto from her clutch purse while she was occupied with the guards. Of course, that was why the bastard had been so smug as he ran out on her, he had what they came for.

Sarah activated the untraceable function on the special phone Tommy's friend had supplied before she called for an extraction. Even though she knew that Larkin had taken the mission data and abandoned her, she wasn't expecting the response she got from the station chief they were reporting to for this mission. Once she'd told him what happened, he informed her that her story was the exact opposite of the lead agent's, who was currently being extracted with the mission data. He then went on to tell her that they couldn't endanger the primary extraction by sending someone for her now, so she'd have to go to ground for twenty four hours before they could extract her. He was also rather insistent that she give him her current location.

Given that Larkin would be out of the country by now, she knew the argument that she needed to wait where she was for twenty four hours was total bullshit, and that in turn meant that the only purpose for him to be demanding her current location was to give her up to the warlord so that the warlord could get rid of her and clean up his mess for him. As soon as she worked that out, she disconnected and started moving again.

A whispered call to Zondra, because she had more European connections, got her working on an off the books extraction option while Sarah snuck onto a truck that was headed in the direction of the border, just not the one that most people would expect her to be heading for. She had had to change trucks a few times when they pulled into truck stops on the trip down from Kharkiv in order to keep heading in the right direction, but it had been a surprisingly comfortable trip, laying on top of the sacks of vegetables and the like in the back of the trucks. Come morning she was in another town over five hundred kilometres away and getting confirmation of the details from Zondra about being picked up by a transporter who she'd used to get key witnesses out of a bind before.

Sarah gave Zondra the details of three of the clean passports that she'd had hidden in the lining of her clutch purse to make the travel arrangements, and Zondra confirmed all her measurements for the clothes that the transporter would be bringing with him. When she finished the call, Sarah found a place where she could get some rest in relative safety, and settled down for the day, thanking whoever was up there that it was a Sunday, so everything was closed.

First thing Monday morning, Sarah cleaned herself up as well as she could at the sink in the toilet of the offices she'd holed up in, had an unappetising but filling breakfast made up of the last of the vegetables she'd lifted from the trucks she'd been travelling in just over twenty four hours before, and then headed down to where she was supposed to meet the transporter early, so she could get set up in a position where she could watch the meeting point without being seen by anyone.

At precisely the appointed time, the big black Audi that had been described to her rolled up and stopped at the meeting place. Zondra had warned her that this guy was a stickler for his rules and would leave if she didn't turn up within what _he_ regarded as an acceptable period, so Sarah delayed just long enough to confirm that he hadn't been followed before she came forward.

When she came forward to exchange the challenges and responses, it was obvious that while the man was ex-military, it was 'ex' in name only. He relaxed a fraction once they'd identified each other, but not much. Once he had accepted that she was who he'd come for, he handed her the bags with clothes, shoes etc and suggested that she get changed back wherever she'd been hiding, as that would almost certainly be more comfortable than trying to do so in the car, she nodded her thanks at that and took the bags.

When she looked in the bags, she reminded herself to thank whoever had organised this, because as well as the clothes that she'd expected, they held fresh underwear, packets of wet wipes, cleansing gel and deodorant, tooth and hairbrush, makeup etc. She stuffed the dirty clothes and boots into the bags, as they'd have to be disposed of. Deciding that the hair and makeup could wait until she was in the car, she quickly got herself cleaned up and dressed in the clean underwear, clothes and shoes and headed back to the car.

Aside from a curt "Seatbelt please." as she got into the car, the transporter didn't say a word until they were on the road. Even then, it was mainly confirmation of the details to ensure that no errors had been made in the communications via Zondra and his organiser. He didn't appear to have an issue with her having the coffee and pastries that he'd brought for her and fixing her hair and makeup as they talked, the only thing that was anything like an issue was that he insisted that she strip and dispose of her pistol before they reached the Moldovan border, and as that was less than half an hour from where he picked her up, she had to do that pretty much straight away. The clothes and boots that she'd been wearing were also disposed of along the way, but any papers to identify her as the woman who had been at the dacha outside of Kharkiv had already been disposed of in garbage bins at the truck stops where she changed trucks on that first night.

Once they were across the border and out of the Ukraine, the transporter relaxed a little and enquired as to how she was holding up. While they didn't go into any great detail, he got the gist of what happened and his reaction said that being betrayed by people you depend on was something he'd definitely had experience of. Frank was a good listener, and talking to him as they drove across Moldova and Hungary and into Austria relaxed her, so she was in a much better frame of mind by the time he dropped her off at Vienna International Airport with her luggage.

At the airport, she disposed of the passport she'd been using so far, and then had a shower and got changed before she used the second passport to claim the e-ticket that was waiting for her. She was flying business class for this leg of the trip, and she didn't relax until they were in the air and well on their way. After that though, she slept most of the way to Mexico City, because this was the safest she'd felt in days. In Mexico City, she changed identities again before she flew on to Tijuana, and then disposed of that identity as soon as she left the airport.

Once she was at their safe house in Tijuana, she bought some groceries and settled down to work out what she was going to do, because the only thing she thought that she could say for sure was that she'd been burned by the CIA.

 **A/N:** **Yes, I realise that I've railroaded the** **story line of the** **Taken series** **here** **, but I never liked the idea** **(much less the reality)** **of girls being taken by white slavers, and never liked his wife's character in the movies either** **for that matter** **, so getting Kim away from her and the slimy businessman she married** **so she can be safe and happy** **works for me.**

 **T** **he agents all have a back story, so who's to say that Roan's isn't that he was studying to be a brilliant lawyer before he became a brilliant spy?**

 **BTW:** **I thought it** **would be fun** **to lob something in** **from left field to see whether people are paying attention** **. Yes, Mary is the girl's mother, but Stephen isn't the father, she became pregnant** **when** **she was** **raped by Volkoff** **after** **she went** **in** **to recover Hartley. Volkoff had** **the baby** **taken away** **at birth** **to be raised to be the heir to the Volkoff empire. Ellie and Chuck's little sister is, of course, Vivian Macarthur** **(after all, they never said in the series who Vivian's mother was,** **did they?** **)** **This won't be the only skeleton to come out of the family's closet though.**

 **T** **he mission that ended Sarah's partnership with Larkin was** **based** **in part** **on my** **old** **Exit Strategy one-shot.** **The start of the next chapter will be based on parts of this and similar scene** **s from CVN and** **Sleepers as well.**


	5. Meet Cute

**OK, Story Reading 101, the best rule to follow is: Unless the writer explicitly _requests_ suggestions on what to write, if you have the urge to repeatedly tell him or her how to write their story, _DON'T_! **

**I'm willing to bet that most writers share my inclination to tell anyone who keeps making unsolicited ' _suggestions'_ about what changes we _have_ to make to our stories to suit them to shove it, for that matter it makes some of us wonder why we even bother writing stories here. **

**So, if you think your suggestions are so wonderful, sit down and write the story you want to see _yourself_ , don't try to dictate to another writer what to change in _their_ story to suit _your_ ideas!**

 **Like most writers, I have an image of at least of how I want my story to flow in my head, so having someone keep trying to tell me what I _need_ to change to make it better for _them_ not only throws me off, it aggravates the hell out of me, to the point that I'm sitting here responding to those messages telling me what to do rather than working on the story.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.**

September 2005 – Langley Va

Upon his triumphant return to the States, Bryce Larkin was riding high until he was asked to unlock the device that the mission data had been copied into. Because he'd left all of the real work to Walker, he hadn't known until then that the device locked away the data behind multiple levels of encryption and security that were keyed to the agent who had used the device. The fact that he _wasn't_ able to unlock the device was all it took to blow apart the story he'd been telling ever since he reported in while he was being extracted.

When he called in, he'd told the Station Chief that Walker had gone off mission and tried to seduce the wrong person at the party, so she got herself caught. His tale of daring do went on to say that as he couldn't save her without jeopardising the mission, he had to leave her to face the situation she'd created for herself while he went on to complete the mission and get the data they were sent to retrieve and then called to be extracted.

The fact that Larkin couldn't unlock the device _proved_ that he hadn't been the one who had retrieved the mission data, and that in turn called the rest of his story into question. The device was sent off to a secret facility in California to get the tech who had created it to unlock it and extract the data while they dragged the real story out of Larkin. It took Graham to scare him enough to admit that they had been pinned down by the guards after Walker retrieved the data, so he'd grabbed the device and left her behind, because he decided that the data was more important than her.

Graham was furious that his own plan had backfired on him, teaming Walker up with this idiot was meant to make her more malleable, not get her killed! He paused at that, Walker was the best agent he'd ever seen, maybe even better than that bitch Frost, surely it'd take more than some two bit Ukranian warlord to finish her off? No, he wasn't going to accept that she was dead until he had some real proof, so that was the priority now!

As he was thinking that, he noticed that Larkin was still in his office and barked at him to get out, telling him that he was suspended without pay until further notice. As Larkin went to scamper out of the office, he stopped him, and the menace in his voice as he told him that if he tried to leave Washington there'd be hell to pay almost made Larkin foul his expensive silk boxers and Italian suit.

When Graham ripped into the Station Chief for failing to confirm the details of Larkin's mission report, the story became even more convoluted, because the Station Chief had to admit that Walker had called for an extraction a couple of hours after Larkin, but said that before the extraction could be organised, his mole in the dacha had reported that a young blonde woman had been brought in with the dress that Walker had been wearing that night. When he went on to say that the woman had reportedly died in the process of her….. _questioning_ , and her body had been disposed of, Graham flew into a rage, but he cut the link before he said too much on a video conference that was being recorded. He vowed to himself that both of those incompetents would pay for their parts in costing him his best agent!

Even the poetic justice that Walker had obviously gone out being used in what may have been worse ways than he'd been trying to force her to accept wasn't enough to mollify his anger at what he'd lost, and the changes he'd have to make to his plans without having her to make them work.

* * *

Meanwhile, Larkin was holed up in a hotel, trying to drink his worries away. He wasn't an idiot, he knew that Graham valued Walker far more than him, even if his ego wouldn't let him admit that Graham's opinion on that was justified. That meant that his abandoning Walker to be captured and killed would probably be the end of him, so he decided to make the most of it and called up the best looking and most imaginative of the admin personnel that he'd been working to ensure that he was the one who came out looking the best in all of the mission reports.

Out of force of habit, he tried to get what information he could out of the women while he was screwing them, and a few days into his bender, he came across a real gem, that Project Omaha was still going, and they'd recently made a major breakthrough on the delivery mechanisms! As soon as he got rid of the woman, he dug out the contact details for the one who had offered him a king's ransom for the Intersect before and called him, asking if they were still prepared to pay the same if he brought them the Intersect.

When he had confirmation that they would deliver what he wanted and they sent him a small computing device that could copy all of the data off quickly and compress it enough to store it on something that could fit into his pocket, Larkin went to work. It was only two and a half years since he'd left Project Omaha, and on a top secret project like that the key staff rarely changed, so with any luck he knew where he'd be able to find one of the ones he'd need to get access to what this Fulcrum organisation wanted.

It took him three nights to find Captain Bowman, one of his top choices, drowning his sorrows in a bar. The fact that he was already half tanked made it easier to slip something into his drink and then get him out of the bar without a fuss. Captain Matthew Bowman had a secret, one that hadn't come out when his security clearances were being vetted, you see Captain Bowman was a closet homosexual. Larkin had discovered this while he was working the personnel of Project Omaha, looking for anything that could give him an advantage, and now he could use it.

Larkin took him home, seduced what the current security controls were and the latest passcodes out of him, and then killed him. Captain Bowman was lucky that Larkin needed certain parts of him (like his eyeballs) to use on the biometric devices to get access, because that meant that Larkin had to make his death quick and clean. He stashed the body where it wouldn't be found and cleaned up the apartment, then headed for the Omaha facility.

Two of the things that had put Bowman at the top of Larkin's list was that he was quite similar in height, size and colouring to Bryce, and that his position gave him twenty four seven access to the facility. This meant that if he was careful, Bryce would be able to use his accesses to get into the Omaha facility at night without setting off alarms.

Everything seemed to be going to plan, he got onto the base and into the facility without being challenged by the guards, and from there got into the server room to plug the device in and started copying the data off. He was just finishing copying off the data when everything went to shit, because the alarms went off and he heard the doors locking.

What Captain hadn't told him, because he didn't know most of the details, was that over two years before, the CIA had lost sole control of Project Omaha. After everything fell apart when they realised that Larkin _wasn't_ the almost perfect Omaha Candidate that they'd believed him to be, people started talking about what a disaster that had been, and they were overheard by others who weren't in the pocket of Langston Graham and his cronies.

When that news got out, an oversight committee was convened, but the people driving Project Omaha didn't have enough time to get control of that committee, so the findings of the committee resulted in control of Project Omaha being split between the CIA and the military, and the military's allocated co-director was one Brigadier General Diane Beckman, because of her association with groups that had demonstrated their superiority in technological matters.

The Special Projects groups weren't directly involved in project Omaha, but Diane had had them beef up the security on the critical systems and data, and this was what had set off silent alarms when the Intersect data was accessed. Casey happened to be in D.C. at the time because he was winding up a solo mission that Diane had sent him on, so she contacted him and sent him to the Omaha facility to deal with the problem.

When Casey arrived and was cleared to take charge, all they could tell him was that the data was being accessed, but they didn't know where from. As he still favoured the 'if in doubt, attack!' approach, he ordered the entire facility locked down and a room by room search until they found the intruder. This was what set off the alarms and locked the doors.

Larkin panicked when the doors locked, but tried to calm himself and think of a way out of this. He smiled to himself when he remembered the other half of what he'd agreed to do. When the device was delivered to him with instructions on how to use it, so were a few but very powerful bombs and his instructions for what to do with them. Once the data had been copied off the systems, he was to set the bombs to blow up the systems, databases and backups, to ensure that the copy of the data he had on the device was the only one in existence. They pointed out that the explosions would also give him cover to escape, which he had no issue with.

As he couldn't understand why they were worried about backup tapes, Larkin modified the plans and used that bomb to blow the door to get him out of there, setting the other bombs to blow up the systems and databases after he'd escaped from the server room. He was confident that those explosions would destroy anything else in the server room anyway.

Once again, the plan was going well, the first bomb took out the door (well, half of the wall that the door was mounted in) and he took off, Bowman's accesses still worked to get him though the doors outside (something that caused considerable trouble when Casey later found out that Larkin had been using the accesses of a man who wasn't normally supposed to be in the facility at night, but no-one had told him about him being there), and he decided to go up and then use the fire escapes to bypass the security he knew would be at the main entrances now.

He almost made it, but he hadn't taken John Casey's distrust of everything into account. When the bombs went off and the security guards started running towards the explosions, Casey immediately thought of a diversion and headed outside. That was how he was there to see a fire exit burst open and a figure who wasn't wearing a guard's uniform race away from the building.

While he might not be able to match Mowgli, Casey was better than just about anyone else he'd gone up against with most weapons, so while a hundred yard plus shot with a handgun was an impossible shot for most people, it wasn't for him. To be sure, he squeezed off four shots in two or three seconds, and was rewarded with seeing the figure go down.

Larkin felt three or four hammer blows in his back and he went down, hard. He knew from the difficulty he had breathing and the way he was coughing up large amounts of blood that his chances of surviving this were very slim to none, so he went to send the data off to Fulcrum, now that he was outside the Faraday cage that encased the entire Omaha facility, but stopped. What had Fulcrum done for him? Nothing! With that, he went with his usual fallback plan (screw Bartowski ), quickly changing the address to one that he'd committed to memory years ago in case he wanted to send a final 'Fuck You!' to the bastard who'd screwed up his plans before he sent the email.

Casey wasn't one to lower his guard, so it took him a few minutes to approach the body on the ground carefully, holding his pistol on the figure as he nudged it over with his toe. Larkin had to laugh at the shocked look on Casey's face, which in turn led to him coughing up a lot more blood as Casey tried to get an answer out of him. "Larkin? What are you doing here? What have you done with the data you stole?"

Larkin spent the next few minutes trying to laugh and coughing up more blood, then the small thermite charge in the device went off to destroy the device once the data had been sent and he gave Casey a bloody grin, wheezing out. "You're too late, it's gone!" before he coughed up the last mouthful of blood and died.

By the time the medics arrived, there was no chance of reviving him, so Casey put the remains of the device into an evidence bag and walked off. Diane and Graham arrived about half an hour later and went through the debriefing with him. Casey turned over the remains of the device to the on-site techs to see what they could get off of it and Diane told him to stand down.

September 2005 – Tijuana Mexico

Sarah spent a few days trying to work out what the hell she was going to do now, then she realised two things, the first being that as far as the CIA knew, she was dead, and the second was that this meant that she was finally free to try and find Mama to get her out of danger. Zondra and Carina told her to just take the money and run, but she said that she'd only take what she needed so that the option was still there for them as well.

She used the secure communications they had set up to get Tommy to step up the covert searches he had been doing for any mention of her mother, and made plans to get back over the border and disappear. They'd have to replace the car they had at their San Diego safe house, because she'd be taking that one when she went off to look for her mother.

Now she was on the spot like this, Sarah understood why Zondra had always laughed at her and Carina when they'd turned their noses up at the cars they had stashed at their safe houses. Sure, they weren't anywhere near as stylish as the Porsches that Sarah loved or the Ferraris that were Carina's go to car, but they were at least as fast and they didn't attract undue attention. The car that Sarah was driving up to San Diego was a 2001 Subaru Impreza WRX, the performance of this car was well above a stock WRX but it had been made to look like a slightly modified ordinary Impreza to give them the element of surprise if they suddenly had to make a run for it.

Similarly, the car she'd be taking to go look for her mother in was a hopped up Lancer Evolution VIII that had been made to look like a tastefully done up 2004 Lancer. It fitted in with the image she was adopting of a girl of moderate means in her twenties with a bit of a sense of adventure, it had the legs to take her all over the country if necessary without costing too much to run, and had the go to get her out of trouble if she needed it.

Sarah had no trouble getting over the border to the safe house in San Diego, and took the Lancer to get it serviced and tuned up by a mechanic they knew and trusted in town while she got the rest of her equipment ready. She made sure that the sights were set properly and she had plenty of ammo and mags for the pistols and the M4 carbine she was taking with her, and checked out the surveillance equipment, laptops and the rest of the gear as well.

She'd been waiting for Tommy to get back to her with a clue on where to look, but she understood that he had to be careful and she couldn't just sit in San Diego waiting, so when she got the Lancer back from the mechanic, she changed the plates, packed her gear into the car and headed up the coast to Los Angeles first thing the next morning. Worst comes to worst, she would just check out the areas where they and Auntie Mary had been living before her father took her away in hope that she might see someone she recognised from back then and that they might have some idea where they'd gone when they left.

* * *

Halfway to Los Angeles, the phone rang, and when she saw the first half of Tommy's number as she glanced at the display she jumped to answer it. "Tommy, did you…."

The voice that cut her off _wasn't_ Tommy's. "Walker! Where the hell are you and why haven't you checked in over a week?"

Sarah muttered "Fuck!" as she pulled over and tried to settle her nerves. She hadn't been expecting anyone but Tommy to be calling her because she thought everyone else in the CIA believed that she was dead. She hadn't even risked letting Jane know that she was OK, in case she was being bugged.

When she had calmed herself enough she answered. "The reason I haven't checked in, _Sir_ , is that given I've already been burned by the CIA, making it easier for you to catch me didn't seem to be too bright a move in my book!"

There was silence on the line for about thirty seconds. "What the fuck are you talking about being burned for Walker? You haven't been burned! I was told you had been captured and killed by that warlord."

"Oh I was meant to be captured alright, that bastard Larkin tried to make sure of that when he started firing at the guards and then stole the device and abandoned me to be killed at the dacha! I managed to get away, but he had already taken the car and led them straight to the hotel, so by the time I got there on foot the warlord's men were all over the place and had all of _my_ things. _His_ things obviously went with him when he was extracted!"

She silently thanked the guy who'd made these phones again, because if she could trust that they were as untraceable as Tommy said as long as they were in the right mode, which it was, Graham couldn't get her location from this call. "I moved away from the hotel, found some different clothes and ditched what I was wearing at the dacha, then I called in for an extraction. The fucking Station Chief tried to make me stay where I was for twenty four hours and get my exact location out of me so that he could give me up to the warlord! If that wasn't being fucking burned, what the fuck would you call it, _Sir_?"

Graham swore incoherently for about five minutes and then started speaking again. "I'd call it one dead man walking in Europe and _you_ pushing your luck Walker! Larkin's dead, and that Station Chief will be as well soon. _He_ burned you, _not_ the CIA, you're still my best agent and I need you, now are you going to do your duty or will you and your mother be joining the other two?"

She wanted to tell him to go fuck himself but he'd just played the card he knew would make her buckle, Mama…. "What do you need me to do Sir?"

"Are you in country?"

"Yes Sir."

"Good! I need you to be in Los Angeles first thing tomorrow morning, can you do that?"

"Yes Sir."

"Right. The techs are still putting the information together but they'll get it to you by then. What we have so far is that Larkin sent what he stole from a government facility here before he was killed to an old college buddy of his. You will use _any_ _and all_ means necessary to recover what Larkin sent to him! You can kill him afterwards if you want, hell, you can kill everyone there if you want, but you _will_ recover what was sent to him first, you got that Walker?"

"Yes Sir."

"Beckman is sending her Pit Bull Casey after the same intel. Under no circumstances is he to get his hands on it! You will get to this guy, recover that intel and you will deliver it directly into my hands, and my hands only! If Casey or anyone else gets in your way, kill him and anyone else who tries to stop you, do you understand Walker?"

"Yes Sir. Do we know anything about the target yet?"

"Just his name, the fact that he was Larkin's room mate at Stanford, what is presumably his business's company name and the area it's in. He's Charles (Chuck) Bartowski and the company is Charlemagne Technical Services in Pasadena. Calling his business Charles the Great's company makes it a good bet that he's just like Larkin, so that should make it easy for you to work him. I'm doing what I can to keep Casey tied up here in D.C. for as long as possible, so get to L.A. and get my intel for me before he gets a chance to interfere!"

Sarah just said. "Yes Sir." again and Graham disconnected the call without another word.

She sat back with a tear trickling down her cheek, she'd thought that she was free and she'd be able to get Mama to safety, but that bastard had caught her again! She shook her head about the fact that he hadn't asked once whether she had what she needed to carry out this mission, he was probably laughing about the fact that she'd have no choice but to fuck the guy into submission to get what she needed from him…. No, he wasn't laughing about anything at the moment, whatever this was was important, but he _woul_ _d_ be gloating about that as soon as he had the time to stop and enjoy it. Well you lose you bastard! She had everything she needed right here in the car and she was less than an hour away from L.A. so she could get in, get what she needed, kill Larkin's accomplice if indeed he was anything like Larkin, and still have time to check out where they'd lived in hope of finding someone who could point her to where Mama or Auntie Mary had gone.

September 2005 – Pasadena Ca

An hour later she was sitting in an Internet cafe in Pasadena, looking up Charles Bartowski and Charlemagne Technical Services. Sarah shook her head at how little understanding of the real world the analysts seemed to have, as she was still waiting on the extra info from them, but before she'd finished her coffee, she had the address for the business and a description of what they did there. From the comments she'd read, this 'Chuck' was a real guru, and that gave her the approach she needed to use to get to him.

Sitting in the car down the street from the Charlemagne office though, Sarah started having serious misgivings about this, because that building was far more secure than it was made out to be. She spotted the discreet armoured glass, cameras all over the place, hidden roller shutters that could close off all the windows and doors and even what looked like hidden weapon emplacements, this place was a fucking fortress…. Her face screwed up in disgust as she unfortunately realised that with all this security, she might actually _have_ to fuck this bastard into submission to get what she needed and get out again after all.

She tried to push bile rising in her throat down as she grabbed the bag off the back seat and started changing from the extremely cute and wholesome girl next door in a tank top, tight jeans and boots into your stereotype wet dream sexy secretary in a rather short, tight skirt and stilettos in the car. Reluctantly accepting that she might need to go further to pull this off, she took off her bra and dropped it into the bag, luckily she was wearing nice underwear, so she didn't need to change that. The suit jacket over the thin white silk blouse gave the outfit a (very) thin veneer of respectability, even though the overall effect basically said 'fuck me!', especially with how many buttons were undone on the blouse. In five minutes, she'd redone her makeup to match the new outfit.

She transferred the paperwork she'd put together from the backpack she'd had it in before into the stylish woman's briefcase from the secretary bag and girded her loins to put on a bit of a show to try and distract anyone who might be monitoring those cameras from the fact that she'd been sitting in the car for fifteen minutes. One long, lovely leg, and then the other, were extended out of the car door before she exited to stand up, tugging the skirt down in a façade of modesty. Then she made a point of showcasing her delightful derrière as she bent over to lean back into the car to collect the brief case, tugging her skirt down again and her jacket straight before she proceeded to the Charlemagne office.

When she walked into the Charlemagne office, the animal growl that came from the short Asian woman who'd buzzed her in confirmed that the outfit was working, but this obviously wasn't Charles Bartowski so she needed to somehow get past the little minx without being mauled, it was obviously time for the ditzy secretary routine. "Hi! Is Mister Bartowski in? We've got a _real_ big problem and my boss's friends told him that if anyone could help us it would be Mister Bartowski!"

The suspicious but amused look on the girl's face told Sarah that she'd screwed up somehow, it looked as though no-one who was actually referred to Bartowski would call him 'Mister Bartowski'. Damnit! Now she'd have to work this harder, she just prayed that she could get out of this without giving the bastard any more than an eyeful.

The girl kept giving Sarah appreciative looks as she turned and wandered over to a door on the other side of the office and called out. "Chuck! There's a…. _lady_ here to see you!"

Sarah heard someone respond quietly (and absently, as though he was concentrating on something else) to the girl from the other side of the open door a couple of minutes later. "Anna, we've got the intercom for a reason, it isn't very professional to go shouting across the office, especially when you're saying things like _that_."

The girl, Anna obviously, lowered her voice so that Sarah had to strain to hear what she said. " _You_ try to keep your mind above your belt when you see this one, she's fucking gorgeous! Do you think the boys might have gotten you a stripper-gram or escort for your birthday? If so I want to know where she came from, I'll order one for El, hell, I'll order one for _myself_!"

"Shit Anna! That's my sister you're talking about! I could have done without that image in my head! Now, what the hell are you talking about?"

"There's a rather scantily clad leggy blonde goddess here who's asking for Mister Bartowski and she's using the old 'Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.' routine."

Sarah heard the guy give a nice chuckle (nice? Where the hell did _that_ come from?) and said "You're such a dork Anna, and a pervert by the way, now where's this lady?"

"The _lady_ is at the reception desk..." Anna's voice dropped even lower as she glanced at Sarah again. "And I think she can hear us, actually."

"Shit Anna! You couldn't have mentioned that earlier?"

With that, the guy came through the door with a tablet computer in his hand, saying. "Sorry to keep you waiting, how can I help you Miss…."

* * *

The moment he saw her, he froze, and so did Sarah. Things dropped into place for Sarah quicker than they did for him, because she had already been thinking about them before she got here. Charles. El. Technical genius. They were in Los Angeles where they'd all came from and she'd know those eyes and that gentle smile anywhere, this was…. "Charlie?"

He just stared at her in shock and yearning as he whispered. "Sammie?"

Anna froze too at that, looking from Chuck, to Sarah, and back again. "Sammie? This goddess is _your_ Sammie? What the fuck's going on Chuck?"

Chuck's eyes didn't leave Sarah's as he whispered. "I…..don't…know."

This hadn't hit Anna as hard as it had hit the two main players in this scene, so she still had enough of her wits about her to suddenly realise that there was someone else this news was vitally important to. The other two didn't even notice when she ran into her office to call Emma.

Emma and Ellie were both at home, and when they heard what Anna said they didn't even take the time to make sure the door was locked as they ran for Ellie's car. Ellie was the only one in the family with the reflexes and skills to come close to Chuck behind the wheel, and while no-one timed it, it was a good bet that Ellie had easily beat Chuck's best time between Arcadia and Pasadena with that run as her 2005 Lancer wagon with a seriously tweaked works rally spec Evo IX drivetrain was the fastest machine in their 'regular' stable and Ellie wasn't holding anything back, if that _was_ Sammie standing in their office, she was going to get Auntie Em there before she could leave!

In the office, Anna was splitting her attention between the pair standing in front of her, haltingly trying to talk to each other and the tracker that was showing Ellie's Lancer's progress. When the Lancer was getting close, she entered the code to open the garage door on the storage side. As soon as the Lancer screeched into the building she entered the code to shut the door, as the two women just left the car doors wide open when they jumped out and ran for the office.

It was hard to tell who moved faster when Emma and Ellie burst into the office, Sarah as she produced a pistol out of nowhere and brought it to bear on the intruders, or Chuck as he stepped in front of the two women to shield them. The point was moot though, because the second Sarah realised just who it was she was aiming the pistol at, she dropped it as she stepped forward, gasping in a disbelieving voice. "Mama?"

Anna had tears in her eyes from the sight of the teary reunion of Emma and her daughter, and the way her girlfriend and her brother were holding each other and crying in relief and disbelief as well, as she went through to the storage area to take the keys out of the ignition and close the doors of Ellie's car. When she came back in, she realised that she should let the others know as well, and went to call Bry, Jeff and the General. Bry and Jeff headed for the office a bit more quietly than Ellie had, but the General demanded that Anna get her a video link to the office immediately.

When the diminutive General appeared larger than life on the big screen on the wall in the office, Sarah flushed with anger, what the hell was General Beckman of the NSA and military intelligence doing intruding on their family moment like this? But…. the old bitch was crying? And trying to say…. what was she trying to say? Sarah was rather distracted by seeing her Mama for the first time in nearly sixteen fucking years, but she was sort of getting Beckman's words….

"Oh Emma! I can't believe that we've found her after all this time! How did you?….."

Diane stopped, suddenly realising that it was an awfully big coincidence that Emma's daughter, who they knew was in the CIA, suddenly turned up the day before Langston Fucking Graham's supposedly best agent was due to arrive to investigate where the transmission from the device that Bryce Larkin had had gone to. Diane didn't want to believe that Sammie was Graham's picked agent, but she had to know….

"Agent Walker, I presume?"

Sarah, Chuck and Ellie all froze, and Emma looked horrified as she realised what Diane was saying, and even worse, that it was true. Diane went on in a colder voice.

"Your Director informed me that you would not be able to get to Los Angeles until tomorrow Agent Walker, how is it that you're there now?"

Sarah was about to respond, but Chuck beat her to it, snarling at the screen with such venom that Diane jumped back. "Stop it Auntie Di! We've finally got Sammie back and you aren't going to turn what we have into a war with Graham! If you try and turn on Sammie, you'll have more than Graham to worry about, you'll have _**Me**_ to worry about!"

Ellie stepped up beside Chuck and said in a similar tone. " _ **And Me!**_ "

Sarah could see that the old bitch, who Charlie had just called his Aunt? was afraid of both Charlie and Ellie. It suddenly occurred to her that everything she thought she knew about Old Ironpants had come from Graham and Beckman appeared to be family so she tried to diffuse the situation, she put her hand out to gently touch Charlie on the arm. The anger in his expression faded to confusion as he turned to look at her and she shook her head. "Charlie, no. She's right, I _am_ Agent Sarah Walker and Graham _did_ send me here a day early to try and get what was sent to you before Casey could…."

It was her turn to stop and look back at the screen. "If you're really part of Charlie's family General, I take it that the Casey who is coming here isn't the same stone cold killing machine that the CIA and everyone else know him as?"

Emma reached out to touch her arm. "Di's not just part of Chuck's family Honey, she's also your godmother…."

* * *

Sarah looked back at the screen and Diane nodded hopefully, but at that moment, Emma's tugging at her blouse to fix the wardrobe mishap that must have occurred either when she went for her gun or while she was hugging her mother made the Ice Queen suddenly blush as she realised how she was dressed in front of the two most important people in her world, actually three including Ellie. Emma saw what was going through her head and patted her on the arm. "It's alright Honey, no-one's judging you here, we love you!" Sarah hugged her again with tears in her eyes.

"Oh I love you so much Mama! But I'm, I'm just going to go to the car and grab some clothes so I can get changed into something decent!"

Ellie reached out to take her hand. "Come on Sammie, you can bring your car inside and I'll show you where you can get changed."

As Ellie led her out into the storage area and opened the garage door, Sarah's nose couldn't miss the overpowering smell of burning rubber that was emanating from the Lancer wagon that had been hastily left near the door. Something told her that this thing would put her Lancer to shame.

Turning back to Ellie, she caught and understood the worried look on her face, so she hugged her, whispering in her ear. "I'm just going to get my car, honest Ellie! I've been wanting to get back to you, Mama and Charlie ever since my father took me away. I'm not going anywhere, I promise!" With that she kissed her on the cheek and quickly walked down the street to the Lancer, turning it around and driving back to where Ellie was standing at the open garage door as soon as the street was clear.

Ellie keyed the command to close the door and came back as Sarah was getting the bag out of the back seat. She took her into the Shiloh offices and pointed her to an office where she could get changed. While Sarah was doing that, she went over and looked at her car through the glass wall that fronted the office. She didn't get into the technical details like Chuck did, but she knew enough to recognise that that car had an Evo drivetrain under it, like her wagon and their Summit Wagons did.

When Sarah came out, aside from the vamp makeup, she was back to the girl next door look in jeans and a tank top (and bra) and Ellie smiled, this was how she'd always thought of her! No matter how incredibly hot she'd looked before, Ellie had been a little uncomfortable seeing the one she'd always regarded as her little sister like that.

Sarah tossed the bag back into the car and they went through into the office. Sarah saw the relieved smile pass over her Mama's face when she saw her and she knew that while she'd been honest when she said that they wouldn't judge her, Mama much preferred to think of her like this. So did she for that matter!

* * *

She was a little surprised to see General Beckman still on the screen, she knew how important the woman was and even if they were family here, she couldn't see how she could spend so much time away from her duties…..

A string of things suddenly flashed into her consciousness, that ordinary looking wagon next door that was obviously seriously fast and had even more obviously just been pushed to its limits, something ordinary people couldn't do. The speed and efficiency with which Charlie had moved to shield Mama and Ellie when she grabbed her gun, and Graham referring to Mama as the best analyst and planner that the CIA had ever had…. Her entire family was in the fucking spy business!

That was confirmed a few minutes later when someone else came through from the storage area and Sarah's jaw dropped. "Agent Mills? What are you doing here?"

Ellie snorted. "Well you may not remember him Sammie, but he's been your Uncle Bry all your life…." She stopped and glanced at Emma, who picked it up there. "And he's also your stepfather Honey."

Sarah was looking from one to the other, trying to work out whether this was a joke she wasn't getting, but Bry was sounding angry when he spoke to the others. "I _told_ you that it was Sammie, but you all just told me that I was hallucinating from the pain and blood loss! _Now_ do you believe me?"

Ellie and Chuck were trying to apologise for doubting him, but Emma jumped to her feet and ran to him in tears to wrap her arms around him. "I'm so sorry Honey, I should have believed you then but the arguments that you were almost dead at the time and were confused from the trauma seemed to make sense, can you forgive me?"

Sarah was aghast. "I almost got my stepfather killed?"

Bry looked at her over Emma's head as her held her. "Well for one I wasn't your stepfather at the time, and for another _you_ didn't almost get me killed, I saw a lone agent who was obviously almost out of ammunition being attacked by eight to ten better armed assailants and I stepped in. I had no idea it was you until you rushed over to see if I was OK and I saw your mother's eyes looking down at me."

Emma stretched up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek and then turned in his arms to face her daughter. "Bry and I go way back as friends Honey, before I met your father actually, I met Bry through your Auntie Mary because they worked together quite a bit, but after Mary was assigned to be your Uncle Stephen's handler, Bry was overseas on missions most of the time. When I was with your father, he'd get jealous and cause trouble whenever Bry came around, so Bry stopped coming to save me more trouble..." She looked up at Bry and he nodded for her to continue. "After your father took you and left we got close again, but I didn't divorce your father straight away because I was hoping that he would bring you back, and we were both old fashioned enough to believe in the sanctity of marriage, so we didn't do anything. In nineteen ninety, Bry was seriously wounded on a mission and was sent back home to recover in hospital. He took up with a sl…. A nurse at the hospital and they got married when they found out she was pregnant." It was obvious that she didn't like talking about this, so Bry took up the tale.

"When I went back to active duty, Lenny, or rather Lenore as she wanted to be called, refused to move overseas because she said that it would be bad for Kim, my daughter, so the only times I ever saw them was when I had a bigger break between major assignments. I refused to believe the stories I was being told about all the men she was with, I think I might have trying to convince myself that she was a good woman like Emma despite all evidence to the contrary, but anyway, I turned a blind eye to it. One thing I will say for her is that she didn't do anything in front of Kimmy, and none of her men ever touched my daughter, but that may have been because she knew that I would have killed them, and her for allowing it, if anyone ever did. Anyway, the only thing there for me was Kimmy, and things got more difficult whenever I was there, so when Kimmy was a little older, whenever I did come home, she'd come and visit with me at the house in Arcadia for a few days before I had to go back. And no, I was still married, so your mother and I didn't do anything when I stayed there."

Sarah thought that it was unusual to be talking this openly in front of everyone, but then she realised that she was the only one who didn't already know this story.

"After the business in Milan, I was sent home to be patched up, and once I was stable enough not to need constant care, I was released to come back to the house because Ellie's a qualified ER doctor and she took responsibility for my care. Before I left hospital though, Lenny had divorced me and got remarried to a dodgy businessman by the name of Stewart Sinclair. There was an incident when Ellie found out that Sinclair had physically stopped Kimmy from coming to see me, and that ended up with her and Casey taking Kimmy away into protective custody at our place and my getting sole custody of her, so she's living with us and going to school in Arcadia. Anyway, for the first time in about twenty five years neither your mother or I were married, so we decided that we didn't want to tempt fate and we got married straight away. We wanted you there, so much, but we had no idea where you were, I'm sorry Sammie."

Sarah came forward with tears in her eyes and hugged him. "No! If anyone's at fault it's me, I should have made more effort to find Mama, but Graham had me convinced that he knew where she was and that he could get to her at any time. I was so afraid of that I did just about anything he said to try and keep her safe."

Bry looked grimly at the others over her head, and the other faces in the room, and Diane up on the screen, matched his look, as they had all been in the business long enough to know the types of things that bastard had made her do by dangling her mother's safety on a string over her head.

He stood there with his arms around his wife and stepdaughter until they'd both settled down enough to step back and wipe their faces. Sarah felt a soft touch on her arm and heard Charlie asking softly if she was OK, and she latched onto him. She couldn't believe herself, Charlie was right up there with Mama as the most important person in her life and she'd been here an hour without letting him know just how much she'd missed him?

* * *

When everyone had settled down, Anna looked around the room, Chuck and, Sarah? Emma and Bry and she and Ellie had their arms around each other and Jeff was looking confused. The core family were all looking a little shell shocked, even the General up on the screen, so she decided to take charge and cleared her throat. When they looked at her, she started.

"We've got a lot of serious things to work out here, both family and business, but I think it would make things easier if we started with everyone knowing who each other is..."

Everyone nodded at that, so she went on. "I'm probably the easiest… Shut up you two! You know I can kick your arse Jeff, and I can set Ellie on _you_ Chuck." After a quick glare at the two of them she went on as if nothing had happened. "Because I'm the newest here. I'm Anna Wu, also known as the Lotus in hacker circles and Rikki in Special Ops. Chuck caught me hacking military sites in late ninety nine and made the General give me a choice between going to a black site for the rest of my life or working for him, obviously I chose to work for Chuck. They trained me for the cyber and analysis work and also to assist on missions, and I work with the family in those areas. I'm also…." She stopped, not sure whether to go on, so Ellie took it up.

"My girlfriend, Anna helped me get over some dorks I went out with at medical school and we found that we make each other happier than any guy ever has. You know who I am Sweetie, but my official name is Eleanor Bartowski now. I have a few other names for military identities and I'm also known as Raksha in Special Ops circles. I work on analysis and missions and I'm doing my residencies in ER and neurology. Jeff?"

"Hi, I'm Jeff Barnes, also known as Roscoe in hacker circles. I came in like Anna, Chuck caught me back in ninety six and I chose Chuck over prison as well. I work on cyber and analysis jobs and assist on missions… Um, Bry?"

"You heard the background before Sammie, I'm Bryan Mills, also known as Bagheera in Special Ops circles. Up until I was injured in oh four, I was a CIA field agent attached to the SOG, but since then I've only been doing analysis and mission work with the family. Chuck."

Chuck shook his head, but spoke up. "My official name is now Charles Bartowski and I'm normally known as Chuck rather than Charlie nowadays. Like all of us, I've got a number of other military identities and I'm also known as the Piranha in hacker circles and Mowgli in Special Ops circles…."

He stopped because Sarah was staring at him with her mouth open. "What's wrong?" She tried to compose herself. "Nothing. Go on!"

"I work on Cyber and analysis jobs and missions, Auntie Em?"

"I'm just your boring old Mom Honey, I used to be called the Fox but no-one's called me that in ages… Quiet Bry! Keep that for later! I do analysis work and assist on some missions. Di, Sammie? Which of you is next?"

Diane spoke up. "I'll go Emma. I am Brigadier General Diane Beckman, it is my understanding that I am also widely known as Old Ironpants, as well as Auntie Di to a much more select group that I am hoping that you will join Samantha, because Ellie and Chuck's mother is my older sister, and as your mother noted, I'm also your godmother. As I noticed you worked out earlier, a large part of my work is running the Special Projects Groups, of which our family makes up the core and holds the command positions. The group was just the family before nine eleven, but after that we had to expand to handle the extra workload that was coming at us….."

"Your Auntie Mary is still alive, but she's been stuck in Russia with Alexei Volkoff since early ninety one because she was set up by the CIA and has been trapped there to keep Ellie and Chuck safe from Volkoff, much like you thought you were with your mother. Mary was known as the Frost Queen at one point, she is still known as Agent Frost, or Frost, and she was known as something else when she was a KGB agent, but she claims that she can't remember what it was. That's total bullshit because Mary never forgets anything…"

She cut off the question that Sarah was trying to form. "Yes, Mary was a KGB agent in her youth, Ellie and Chuck can tell you the full story on that later….Your Uncle Stephen was the technical genius who used to build all of the CIA's most advanced tech, he's still known as his codename from back then, Orion. He went off the rails when Mary was sent to Russia and did something really stupid in ninety one that almost fried his brain. He kept getting worse until he disappeared in early ninety three, we located him a couple of years later and he's been in therapy here in D.C. ever since, most days now he's quite capable, but he still has days when he doesn't know who he is. When their father disappeared, Ellie and Chuck were given new identities and moved down there with Emma. Soon after that Emma, Ellie and Chuck started working for me and Casey was assigned to work with and protect them about six months later…"

She glanced at Sarah. "I should give you a bit of background on Colonel Casey as well. He's also known as Baloo, yes, Mowgli's offsider, in Special Ops circles, and I am well aware that he is generally known as Beckman's Pit Bull as well. I will ask you never to call him that when his daughter is there, as he's a good man and he deserves to be respected in front of his daughter. She's at the house quite often and in the office there as well a fair bit, Alexandra is sixteen now. Casey works on analysis jobs and missions, and I use him for outside missions as well. You should know that he was the one who shot your ex-partner Bryce Larkin when he was trying to escape, but Larkin had just destroyed a critical facility and killed many good soldiers doing so, so I believe that Colonel Casey's actions were justified. That being said, I understand that you were involved with Larkin so I apologise..."

" _ **NO!**_ "

Diane looked totally confused. "No what, Samantha?"

Sarah didn't know what part of that to answer first, so she started with the easiest part. "Look, if I'm going to be around you and have to work with Graham, you have to stop calling me Samantha or Sammie or I'll get caught out in front of him. He gave me the name Sarah Walker over seven years ago and he insists that I use it. I've also never used the cover name of Samantha and that bastard is bright enough to remember that, so you _have_ to get used to calling me Sarah!"

They all nodded and apologised, but when Charlie… No, Chuck! Whispered "Sorry." in her ear and kissed the top of her head, she almost forgot what she had been talking about, but then it came back and slapped her in the face like a wet fish. She turned around and looked him in the eye as she answered the other part. "No, I was _**never**_ involved with Bryce Larkin! I was his partner for about a year, and Graham used mission requirements to force me to have sex with him four or five times over that year, but I was _**never**_ involved with that bastard! I'm quite aware of all the stories that he and others have been spreading around about me, but they're all lies!" She was starting to break down in tears by the time she finished, both from happiness at the acceptance and trust in Chuck's eyes and shame from having to admit to having had sex with Larkin, and Chuck drew her into his arms again. When she had herself under control, she stretched up to kiss him on the cheek before turning to face the others and the screen again. Having Chuck's arms remain around her gave her the strength to do this.

"As I said, my official name is Sarah Walker now, but I'm also known as..."

She was cut off by Ellie. "The Ice Queen."

And Anna. "And Shanti."

And Diane in an angry voice. "And Graham's Enforcer!"

She was shocked that they knew the most common names she was known as, but she addressed Diane first. "You sound as though you have an issue with me General."

Diane looked horrified. "Oh no Honey! My issue is with _**Him**_! And myself for not being able to find you and get you away from that bastard years ago!"

Emma piped up. "Chuck has never stopped looking for you Honey, that was one of the things that drove him to master computers back when he was twelve and got access to the technology, learning how to search for you, but there are no official records about you anywhere. We found out about someone being called Shanti after Anna was training with the SOG teams in two thousand and they talked about you. As soon as he heard that, Chuck went searching through the CIA systems again but everything had been scrubbed except for the record that you had attended, Chuck did find some pictures and comments related to Shanti though that let us confirm that it was you. He used those to start searches for images of you or mentions of Shanti. Then in two thousand and one, Roan…."

Sarah interrupted. "Do you mean Roan Montgomery?" When they nodded, she went on. "How did _he_ get into this group?"

She caught a movement on the screen and turned to look at Diane, who was looking rather embarrassed. "We've been together, on and off, for about thirty years now Sarah."

Sarah looked shocked, but Emma started again to take the heat off Diane. "Roan came through after he and Bry went to Stanford with Chuck to get his expulsion reversed after your ex-partner framed him for cheating. Anyway, when we showed Roan the images of you as Shanti he remembered you from when you did your infiltration and inducement training with him. He said you were the most accomplished student he'd ever had, and I told him how your father had been training you at that since you were a little girl. He mentioned that you were being called the Ice Queen then and that he'd also heard the name used since then, and that was how Chuck's been able to track you best since then, when people talk about the Ice Queen. Chuck also worked out that the references to Graham's Enforcer also applied to you, so he's had searches for any references to Ice Queen, Shanti or Graham's Enforcer and image recognition searches for anything that matches your key traits running non-stop for years now."

Sarah twisted her head to look up at Chuck. "When do you have time to any work if you're doing all of this?"

He grinned at her. "It's pretty much all automated, I just look at the results and follow up anything that looks interesting."

She shook her head and turned back to the others, as she didn't want to look at him as she told the next part. "Aside from Larkin and the training I was forced to submit to, I've only been forced to submit to that five times, though I thought I might have to do it again here when I saw what a fortress this place is! I didn't think I'd be able to fight my way out, so if I wasn't able to get this Bartowski character to willingly follow me outside I was….."

Sarah refused to look anyone in the eye for the next part, she was disgusted and ashamed of the sex missions, but the sheer volume of the ones she'd tortured and killed was horrifying. "My specialities are extracting information and killing targets though, I've done many hundreds of those missions..."

She stopped as Chuck gently grasped her chin and forced her to look him in the eye. "I know you've heard the stories about Mowgli, so you know that there is very little chance that you've killed anywhere near as many as I have…. I've had to do the other things more times than I like to think about as well. Of all of us, only Auntie Em and Jeff have managed to largely avoid these things, and even they haven't managed to totally avoid them. Remember what Auntie Em said to you before? No-one here is judging you, and we love you, this is what she was talking about..."

He had to stop talking then, because Sarah wrapped her arms so tight around his neck that he could hardly breathe.

 **A/N: Yes, I realise that I focussed rather heavily on Sarah's attributes when she was getting ready to confront this Bartowski guy, but Sarah is a Goddess, and a Goddess deserves to be worshipped!**

 **NB: Just to be clear for the one eyed personages of limited imagination or cognitive functions, at no point did Sarah _want_ to do anything with this bastard she had been sent to retrieve the information from! However, after taking in the fortified state of the building, she was forced to accept the fact that she was unlikely to be able to fight her way into or out of that building, so she _very_ reluctantly prepared to do whatever she needed to do to protect her Mama, just as she'd been doing for over seven years at this point.**


	6. Foundations

**Sorry, I just realised that I screwed up my calculations on how long it was since Sarah got dragged into the spy biz. I must have been using '97 when Chuck started uni, not '98 when Sarah was grabbed by Graham** **in my head** **, so those references have been adjusted, sorry.**

 **Well we're back to the starting point of the series, and it only took me 48,000 odd words. ;^)**

 **Usual disclaimers,no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.**

Anna looked around at state most of the family were in and suggested that they move downstairs and have this discussion over a drink or ten, a suggestion that everyone readily agreed with. When they stepped out of the lift though, Sarah just stopped and stared, because they had come out into a rather impressive operations centre, with screens everywhere. Anna grinned at her and said. "Welcome to the Dungeon."

The basement of the building that had been known as El Castillo ever since they had it 'remodelled' was like the main warehouse level upstairs, in that it covered the entire building floor plan and was thirty feet high, so two thirds of that area had been split into three levels, while the last third was given over to a high tech urban combat range that was three hundred and sixty feet long, forty feet wide and thirty feet high.

They all had to maintain their weapons skills, and given their civilian covers, they couldn't afford to be seen doing what they did at public ranges (not that there were any ranges around L.A. that offered what they needed anyway), so they created their own private range that was up to their standards. They still had to use outside ranges (usually military) for the sniper rifles, grenade launchers, missiles and the like of course, but their range was enough to keep up their skills with their regular weapons.

The lounge where they were going for a drink was in the middle of the top level, and the wall between it and the range was made of several inches of laminated armoured glass, so much of what went on in the range could be observed from there safely. They also had controls to operate the range from up there, so they could set each other against the range for a bit of friendly competition. The way Sarah was standing at the glass, looking out over the range, they knew it wouldn't be long before she would be trying it out, but she allowed Chuck to lead her to a couch and settled down beside him.

Jeff called out to ask Sarah what she wanted from the bar that went along one wall. Sarah called out "Absinthe!", thinking that she'd throw him with that, so she was shocked when he delivered a tray with everything required to properly prepare the absinthe ready as he and Anna were doling out drinks with a practised ease that said that they'd been professionals at this at one time a few minutes later.

As they were starting to relax, Sarah brought up the thing that had thrown her when she arrived. "What's with this place being a fucking fortress?" The rest of them just waved to Chuck to explain, as he had designed the defences. "Well it basically came down to the fact that our group started to gain a much higher profile after nine eleven, and that was only going to increase. We've doubled or more the size of the group three times since then to cope with the extra work coming in. Anyway, we decided that we needed to have a separate base of operations when Casey, Jeff and I moved back to L.A. in two thousand and one to avoid drawing too much attention to the house so we started looking for a suitable building. We found and bought this building and Auntie Di said that we should do it right from the get go, so I designed the defences for El Castello with input from Ellie, Uncle Bry and Casey, along with the other changes we wanted made to the building."

Sarah nodded, but asked. "El Castello?"

"The building is nominally owned by Castello Property Developments which, like Shiloh Secure Storage which officially takes up most of the building, is part of the La Mancha Corporation. La Mancha also owns a number of other development and investment companies around the country that make enough money to hold up as viable companies."

"Wow, you've really thought this out!"

"A lot of it was Auntie Em, there was a reason she was the best that the CIA ever had, she's absolutely brilliant!"

Emma waved that away. "Don't be ridiculous Chuck, you know as well as I do that most of this came from you and Ellie, the children of the two smartest people I know have definitely surpassed their parents!"

Sarah broke in. "While I could listen to this all day, and I fully intend to do just that once we've gotten past this current mess and I've managed to convincingly fake my death and disappear from the CIA, we have to _get_ past this mess first. If you give me what Larkin sent to you Char… Chuck, I can get it to Graham and close this down before it gets too messy. I'll tell him that you were too busy to open it and I got you to give it up without any trouble at all. Also that you're too well known and liked to die or disappear without a lot of important people asking questions….So the sooner you give me the information he sent you, the sooner I can come back to you…. Come back to the family!"

She knew that something was wrong when she saw the smiles at her slip of the tongue warring with worried and embarrassed looks. "What? What's the issue here?"

Chuck looked at her. "Well…You see. Ican'tgiveyouwhatLarkinsentmebecauseit'sgone!"

"Would you like to take a breath and then try again, but in English this time?"

"I can't give you what Larkin sent me because it's gone."

"What do you mean it's gone?"

Jeff cut in. "It's gone because the genius here opened an unusual and unexplained email without checking it first."

Chuck turned and glared at Ellie then. "Well I probably wouldn't have if Ellie and Anna hadn't taken me out to get me drunk and _roofied_ me!"

Sarah surprised herself as much as anyone else when she shrieked. " _ **What?**_ You _roofied_ your own brother? Ellie, that's so _**wrong!**_ "

Ellie looked stunned. "What? _**No!**_ That wasn't what it was about! He's just been so uptight for ages, he doesn't do anything but work nonstop and won't talk to anyone about it. So when Anna suggested yesterday morning that we take him out and make sure he's loosened up enough for him to stop turning down all of those girls who are always hitting on him….Well with how I was feeling about what she was doing to me at the time it seemed to make a lot of sense..."

Anna bit out. "So it was all my fault was it? Thanks a lot El!"

Ellie kissed and made up with her before continuing the story. "So I got some Rohypnol from the hospital and we convinced him to come out clubbing with us. I know what drinks get him drunk quickest, so we were pouring them down him, and added the Rohypnol when he was too drunk to notice. It worked to a degree, he loosened up and was having fun dancing with a bunch of girls, until some of them got insistent about taking it further and he blew up. He worked out what we'd done then and came charging over to start screaming at us….."

She looked at Chuck with remorse before she continued. "We never realised _why_ he was always working so hard, but we found out in the middle of the dance floor last night. He charged up and started shouting in my face. 'Did you really think that roofying me and getting me to fuck a pile of brainless skanks would be enough to make me forget about Sammie? Why the fuck do you think I work all the time? To try and stop worrying about her and what's happening to her, especially now that she's with that _Golden Boy_! It's nice to see what you really think of me Sis!' Then he looked at Anna and said. 'Looks like I can't depend on friends _or_ family!' and turned and stormed out of the club. It took us a while to get out of the club, because Anna grabbed some of the Rohypnol and downed them with half a bottle of tequila to try and make herself forget the look on Chuck's face when he said that to her so it was hard to get her to leave the club and come home with me."

Ellie looked at Chuck before she continued. "By the time we got back here, Chuck was unconscious on the floor in his office and his computer was fried. We took him downstairs so that I could use the equipment in the medical centre to examine him..." Sarah tabled the 'medical centre' for a future discussion. "But aside from increased brain activity, there was nothing out of the ordinary and he seemed fine, so we left him there. I gave Anna something to counteract the Rohypnol and alcohol and we stayed in our apartment..." Sarah made another mental to follow up the 'apartments'. "So I would be here in case anything happened overnight. Jeff was the one who looked into what happened to cause this, so he can probably explain it better."

Jeff started by looking at Chuck. "Sorry Chuck. I should have realised that you'd never do anything that stupid without something making you. Anyway, I checked the logs and an email with a massive attachment came through a while after Chuck went clubbing with Ellie and Anna. The reason it went through was because the virtual machine that was handling the security checks was destroyed when it tried to open the attachment to check it, it was the virtual equivalent of what happened to the computer in Chuck's room. When I tried to look at the email on the mail server, the virtual machine that handled _that_ function was also destroyed the same way, so we don't _have_ a copy of what was sent left..."

Sarah looked terrified. "We can't tell Graham that! He won't believe that it's just gone and he'll have Chuck brought in and questioned until he's dead….." She broke off as Chuck shook his head.

"It's not gone Sarah, it's in here.." He tapped his temple. "I don't know how it happened, but the human interface component of the Intersect wasn't scrapped from the Intersect code like it was supposed to be a couple of years ago. You see the CIA has been running something called Project Omaha for over twenty five years. The object of that project was to put a massive database of government and other information into an Agent's head, so they would have all the information they needed at their fingertips. The reason I know about this is that Dad was the lead on creating it. The problem was, every test subject this was tried on, bar one, was made brain dead or died when they tried to load it into them. Dad was the only one who ever survived it, and it drove _him_ crazy."

Diane cut in at that point. "Steve wasn't the only one who survived it Honey, you did too, a might better than your father did at that. You didn't forget that, did you?"

He looked at her, confused, for a moment and shook his head angrily. "Shit! Yes I did!"

Ellie rushed to reassure him. "Don't worry Sweetie, it's probably just a temporary effect of the alcohol and Rohypnol and the Intersect all on top of each other. You haven't noticed any other effects today have you?"

He glared at her. "Aside from the splitting fucking headache I woke up with this morning and haven't gotten rid of yet you mean? No."

Diane jumped in in an attempt to head off the argument between the siblings. "As Chuck said Sarah, the Human Intersect code was supposed to scrapped about two and a half years ago when the CIA was forced to accept that the Intersect was a joint Project with Defense, because Stephen had told us what happened to the other test subjects. As soon as I was put in as co-director with Graham, we engineered it so that my people _found_ the test subject data and forced a change of direction for the project, so that the Intersect code was modified to work in a computer, rather than a human brain. That was a relatively simple task as that was how the code was largely developed, and then it was fed into a translator program to work with the brain functions."

She glanced at Ellie and Chuck. "We created a massive database and ran the Intersect code on that system. It didn't deliver answers as effectively as Emma, Ellie and Chuck, but with the massive amounts of information being fed into the system that could be queried for connections, it helped provide subjects for our and other teams to look into. That version of the Intersect wasn't anything like what Graham had envisioned, but it was actually delivering something useful, which was more than Project Omaha ever had. That, and the information about what had happened to the test subjects being leaked, meant that Graham's complaints were overruled, and development and testing of the Human interface portion of the Intersect was banned. All of that code was supposed to be scrapped, but obviously the CIA slipped it back in when we weren't looking."

She stopped and looked at Chuck. "Have you been getting any flashes of information from the Intersect Chuck?"

Chuck nodded, but had a few sips of his whiskey before he replied. "Yeah Auntie Di, including things that aren't supposed to be there. You, Uncle Bry as Bagheera and his military IDs, Auntie Em as her military IDs, Jeff as Roscoe, Anna as the Lotus and Rikki, Ellie as Raksha and her military IDs. It's also got me as the Piranha, Mowgli and my military IDs, and Sarah as the Ice Queen, Shanti and hundreds of different names. On one hand the Intersect is obviously working, but on the other hand it can apparently circumvent all of the measures we and Graham have tried to use to cover our tracks. Given that, it's damned good news that it looks like Dad was right about the fact that I'm most likely the only one who can really use this thing the way it was meant to be used."

Sarah looked horrified that Chuck had seen what she'd done under all of the names that had an image attached to them, but he reached over to squeeze her hand, saying. "It showed me what all of us did Sarah, not just you."

She was still sitting there, rigid, so he put his arm around her and pulled her into him, whispering into her hair. "You're not going anywhere, we'll work this out together, as a family." She nodded and leant into him, but started talking.

"What are we going to do then? If I tell Graham that the Intersect is in your head, he's going to insist that I bring _you_ to him!"

Chuck looked up at the others, asking for suggestions with that look as he spoke. "Well we can drag it out a little to give us time to work something out if you use the excuse that I'm more than a little socially retarded. You know, I insist that we go out as a group the first time so that you don't get the wrong idea and Ellie gets a little drunk and warns you that if you hurt me that way that skank that I was going to marry back at Stanford did, she'll track you down and operate on you without anaesthetic…." Sarah twisted around to look at him at that.

"You were going to **_marry_** your girlfriend at Stanford?"

"No, but everyone thought I was, because Jill was quite a catch, brilliant, beautiful and from a prominent family and I was a brilliant scholarship student with big things in his future, so in nearly everyone's minds it was a match made in heaven. The beauty of this is that it's all easily verifiable, as it's common knowledge that I caught my room mate and supposedly best buddy Bryce Larkin screwing my girlfriend that everyone was sure I would propose to before we graduated in _my_ bed, and I haven't been out with any women since then."

"Wait a second! I was told that you knew Larkin from Stanford, but he was actually your room mate and best buddy?"

"Once again, not my best buddy, but that's what everyone thought. Now, it would probably help for us to engineer running into some of our more prominent clients while we're out. We have quite a few big name customers, including the Chief of Police and Mayor's families, and that will help sell the fact that too many questions will be asked if I just disappeared…."

Diane spoke up then. "Those are good points Chuck, but we still need something stronger than that to deal with someone like Graham. We really need something that will stand out enough to prove the value of having you stay in place here with handlers, especially if we're going to sell the need for people at the level of Sarah and John to be those handlers."

Ellie could see that Chuck was panicking about just how they were going to pull _that_ off, so she tried to offer an olive branch. "We can look into that later, why don't we just try to relax tonight? We can go out to dinner, we'll call it Chuck's birthday dinner and Sarah can tell Graham that she came here straight from the airport late in the day and used the story of panicking about the dead laptop because it had all of her references and everything else she needed to get a job on it, and Chuck insisted she come along with the group because he fell for her looks and 'new in town and don't know anyone' line. The rest of her story will be that when she found out that she effectively crashed his birthday party, she insisted that he let her take him to dinner, just the two of them, and of course he gave in, because it's been over four years since he's been out with a girl and he couldn't say no to someone like her. She had to go back to the shop anyway because Chuck didn't have the bits he needed to fix her laptop and he couldn't get them until tomorrow, and when I found out after dinner and going to a club afterwards that she hadn't gotten herself a hotel room yet, I insisted that she spend the night in our guest room because it was too late to get a room by then..."

* * *

Sarah and the others were all nodding, these suggestions would set up a strong foundation for the type of operation that they all wanted, providing Chuck could come up with the thing that they were avoiding talking about at the moment, an event big enough that Graham couldn't ignore the value of it. Once they had the idea of where they were going to with this, Bry, Jeff and Anna went back upstairs to deal with their business workload (which a nasty virus from a malware site was increasing at the moment) and make a few discreet phone calls to arrange for them to _accidentally_ run into some of their most prominent clients while they were out in hope that it would help Chuck impress this girl he'd just met and who he was quite interested in. Just about all of their clients liked Chuck and knew the stories from Stanford and that he hadn't had a date since, so most of them jumped at the chance to help him impress this girl he was interested in.

With the decisions made for the path they were going to take, Chuck moved into the operations centre and began searching the commercial, military and other information and news feeds in hope of finding something that would provide the trigger he needed to identify a significant incident. While he was doing that, Emma and Ellie gave Sarah the tour and story of El Castello. In the course of this tour, before she went back upstairs she saw the incredibly well equipped medical centre, the incredible operations centre where Chuck was, the electronics labs and workshops, and the holding cells, interrogation rooms, gym, pool, training rooms and armoury on the bottom level.

Ellie grinned at the way Sarah's eyes lit up when she was shown the armoury, because it was three to four times the size of the armoury in the bunker at the house and it had a lot of gear that the impressive 'old' armoury didn't. To take her mind off what was in front of them a little, Ellie suggested that Sarah give the range and a few of the weapons a try, and set her up with 5.56mm M4 and 9mm AS Val assault rifles, 7.62mm SVU-A, 9.3mm SDK and 12.7mm VKS sniper rifles, 9mm MP5 and 10mm MP5/10 submachineguns, and a 10mm Glock 20 to try against her favourite 9mm S&W 5906. She also gave her one of the OTs-38 Stechkin silent revolvers to try out.

Sarah spent the next hour putting thousands of rounds through the various weapons, and came out with her eyes shining and a more thorough understanding and appreciation of their rather unconventional weapons choices. She also _loved_ that range of theirs! Sarah was very impressed with the suppressed weapons that the family obviously used extensively (which in turn gave her insight into the way they operated) and couldn't believe just how quiet that silent revolver was. She was rapidly re-evaluating her family, and was having a hard time getting her head around the fact that the already high standard she seen them at as a little girl was now being raised considerably.

After she'd had her fun, more fun than she'd had since she was training with the SOG guys actually, Sarah sat down to talk to Ellie about what Charlie and the rest of the family had been doing while she was conning, seducing, torturing and killing her way around the world. She wasn't too surprised to hear that Ellie and Chuck had been getting into Intelligence missions from late ninety three and special operations training and missions since ninety four or ninety five. Ellie told them how Uncle Bry, Auntie Em, Casey, Auntie Di and Uncle Roan had been teaching them about their specialities since early ninety three.

The thing that hit Sarah the hardest was when Ellie told her that her own father had been a CIA agent as well, but he'd become a conman after he was taken off active duty and relegated to low level functions because his performance had been deemed too erratic to be trusted when she was four or five. When he took her and disappeared when she was seven, the CIA had put him on a watch list but wrote him off as not worth the expense of tracking him down.

The story was that they only had him arrested in ninety eight to try and use _her_ as bait for her mother, but apparently when Graham saw her and realised that she represented a perfect melding of her mother's incredible intellect, memory and attractiveness, and her father's impressive physical capabilities, he decided that he was being presented with the opportunity to create a younger, more malleable and controllable version of Frost, and he jumped at the the chance of having something like that at his disposal.

That prompted another question that Sarah had been thinking about. "What was Mama talking about when she said that Char...Chuck mastered computers to look for me?"

Ellie snorted. "That was pretty much it in a nutshell. When we agreed to work for Auntie Di, she got us any equipment we asked for, and Chuck asked for a pile of computer equipment and serious communications links. He was already pretty handy with electronics because he emulated Dad, trying to make him proud of him, but he kept running into roadblocks when he was locked out of systems that he wanted to look for you in, so he taught himself how to get around all of those roadblocks. What it comes down to Sarah, is that _you_ are the real reason he became the Piranha, one of the top hackers in the country, if not the world, because he was determined to find you and wasn't going to let anything get in his way. Auntie Di didn't find out about what he was doing until early ninety five, and when she did… well she wasn't going to pass up adding a top hacker to her group's capabilities, so she added a Cyber group that was officially made up of his Navy, Air Force and Army identities at the time and started pushing more work his way. That group expanded in ninety six when he added Jeff, again in two thousand when he added Anna, and really expanded at the start of two thousand and two and a couple of times since then when they had to recruit more people to meet the growing workload."

Sarah stared at her. "So _**I'm**_ responsible for the creation of the hacker that they've all been looking for for the past twelve years?"

Ellie grinned. "Yep, pretty cool, isn't it?"

Sarah had to laugh at that. "Yeah, I guess it is"

* * *

By the time they finished with the tour and discussion, it was time to go and start getting ready. Ellie looked at Sarah and asked. "Are you going to use Chuck's apartment, or one of the spare ones?"

Sarah knew that there was a question Ellie wasn't asking in there, so she just came out and said that. "What are you getting at Ellie?"

"If you use Chuck's apartment, we both know you'll be in bed together tonight. Personally, I think that that would be a _bad_ idea if you want the two of you to go somewhere in the long term. If you're really here for the long run, you'll be better off getting to know each other again first. Look, you're going to hate me for saying this but Chuck's my baby brother and the only real family I have left. If this is really just an assignment to you, please get it out of your system and give him a chance to get over you so that he can try to find a life elsewhere."

When she saw Sarah take that in and break down, Ellie had her answer, and she rushed to embrace her. "I'm so sorry Sweetie, but I just had to lay it out! I want you back, to stay, as much as anyone, except Auntie Em or Chuck of course, but if you aren't planning to stay, _please_ just get it over with and release him. You heard him earlier, he hasn't had a single real relationship in his life, what you two had when you were kids was as close as he's ever come. He dated a few girls in high school and stayed with that skank Roberts for most of the time he was at Stanford to keep up appearances, but he kept what he did with them to the bare minimum and he _never_ gave anything of himself to any of them. Any time he wasn't working, he was searching for _you,_ so if you aren't going to stay, please tell him that so he can try to start living. I love Mom, Dad, Auntie Em and Di and Uncle Bry, I do, but Chuck's the only family I really have, I _need_ him to be OK, so if he isn't going to be with you, I'm begging you to release him so he can find someone who might make him happy."

The next ten minutes or so were taken up with Sarah screaming at Ellie, the gist of which was "How could you say that to me?" By the end of it, they were both tearfully apologising to each other, and Sarah took the spare apartment next to Chuck's to get ready because once they'd had a chance to talk it over, she understood and accepted Ellie's points.

These apartments were pretty incredible too. A second level had been added above the Charlemagne and Shamrock offices, and that had then been split into four cozy but nice two bedroom apartments. Chuck, and Ellie and Anna, had the two end apartments, with the second bedrooms set up as their formal military offices. This meant that they just had to head upstairs when they were required to have a video conference for their 'real' jobs, Chuck and Ellie also spent most nights working in these offices as well. With less light and a fraction smaller, the other two apartments weren't quite as nice as theirs, but they were still quite comfortable.

* * *

Chuck had laid a detailed trail to show that Sarah had in fact been in Cambridge Massachusetts when she took Graham's call, and she had flown straight to LAX as soon as she concluded her business there and got onto a flight. Ellie had taken Sarah down to LAX to pick up a Porsche Cabriolet from the rental company there just after the flight that she was supposed to be on got in. With Chuck setting it up, none of Graham's people would be able to find a hole in the story, as he had cell tower logs, hotels, car rentals, on-line flight bookings, everything needed in place to hold up the story that Sarah would be telling Graham. The biggest risk was that Graham had had someone try to trace the call before Chuck worked his magic on the system, but Graham had obviously been desperate to get Sarah to get the mess Larkin created under control, and he'd been demonstrably relieved when she answered the phone and confirmed that she was alive, so they thought they were safe there.

At the restaurant, they had a big table that would take at least ten people, because they knew that Casey was on his way back from Washington, hopefully Graham wouldn't find that out until the morning. Diane wanted to be there of course, but she had to stay and deal with Graham. Aside from her, Mary, Stephen and Roan though, the whole family was there.

Sarah had met her step sister Kim and Casey's daughter Alex at the office before they headed to the restaurant, and they were all laughing around the table. As arranged, they 'ran into' a group of their biggest name clients at the restaurant and Sarah was introduced to them as someone who would hopefully be around for a while. Things were a little tense when Casey arrived, because he and Sarah only knew each other as rivals and adversaries, but it was his daughter Alex who slapped him down and made him behave.

It made Sarah's night to see John Fucking Casey being _owned_ by a teenage girl, because _no-one_ had ever managed to make that man back down before in her experience. The best part of the night for her though was how _right_ it felt. She was sitting between Chuck and her Mama, Ellie was on the other side of Chuck and they spent the time talking and laughing. Alex and Kim were lecturing their fathers to behave while Ellie was lecturing Chuck and Anna was being totally inappropriate. Emma and Jeff were enjoying the company, and the fact that they weren't being targeted in any of the lectures.

Sarah was pulled away by a call from Graham during dinner to inform her that Casey had left Washington. She told him that she couldn't talk because she was currently out with the target and his family as it was apparently his birthday and they'd invited her along because she turned up at the shop with a sob story just before they closed. She pointed out that she couldn't refuse the invite to the birthday dinner without damaging her chances of getting close enough to him to retrieve what Larkin sent him, so she was going to try to talk him into letting her take him on another date which was just the two of them.

She assured him that she'd managed to damage a laptop enough to ensure that she had to go back to the shop the next day, so she'd have time to get closer to him tomorrow, and on their date. She also told him that they'd have to be careful how they handled Bartowski because she was introduced to the Mayor and Police Chief of L.A. and their families as friends and customers when they ran into them at the restaurant. Graham was of course pissed off that she hadn't gotten the information before Casey headed for L.A. and worried about the high profile people Bartowski knew, but he had to concede that she couldn't push any harder without raising suspicions, so he let it go with threatening her and her mother if she didn't get it before Casey.

After dinner, Emma, Bry, Casey and Jeff took the girls home while Chuck, Sarah, Ellie and Anna went to a club. While they made a point of avoiding the club they'd gone to the night before, they did run into some of the women that Chuck had been dancing with, and they weren't at all pleased to see that this admittedly absolutely gorgeous blonde bitch had obviously gotten far further with him than any of them had. It didn't take long for the women's voices to get loud enough for all of them to be thrown out. They all agreed that they'd been seen enough to support the story they put together, especially as they'd also run into the children of other prominent clients and introduced Sarah to them, so they just went back to El Castello.

* * *

That night, Sarah was very aware of the fact that Chuck was just next door, but she had to agree that Ellie was right, if she went to him tonight they'd just end up in bed and she didn't want this to be be fast and furious, she wanted it to be for the long haul. She'd been waiting for sixteen years to get back to Mama and Charlie, waiting a little longer wouldn't hurt.

About three in the morning, Chuck found the event that he was pretty sure would give them what they needed. News reports about General Leland Stanfield talking at the Pacific Security League Conference that night at a downtown L.A. hotel triggered an information flash from the intersect that showed that someone had advertised for the conference to be blown up when the General was on stage, that a very competent Serbian Bomber had accepted the contract to do it, along with the plans for the hotel and bomb, schedules showing when the General would be on stage etc.

As soon as she got up in the morning, Sarah went straight out and knocked on Chuck's door to ask whether he wanted to go and have breakfast with her, but he said that he was just making breakfast and invited her in. Sitting at the table talking to Chuck, Sarah did find it a little strange how comfortable she was, considering that the tank top and boy shorts she'd slept in covered less than the sexy secretary outfit she'd been wearing the previous day (her spur of the moment idea had been to check with Chuck and _then_ go have a shower and get dressed), but it seemed the accepted breakfast attire, seeing as Chuck was only wearing boxers and a T-shirt.

The domesticity of the scene made Sarah choke back a contented sigh before Chuck heard it, but she had to laugh to herself about the fact that the traditional image would have had _her_ in the kitchen, not her man. That last thought brought her to a sudden stop, Charlie wasn't her's, not after sixteen years and the life she'd been leading, especially with the men she'd seduced and had sex with because she was required to for the job. The fact that it wasn't her choice didn't change the fact that she could have killed them or died to avoid it, and she hadn't. Sarah was spiralling and didn't even realise that she was crying until Charlie, Chuck or whatever he was calling himself now was kneeling in front of her, wiping her tears away.

"I told you yesterday, we've all had to do it. I had sex with girls at high school and Jill Roberts at Stanford to keep up the cover of Chuck Bartowski, up and coming tech genius, and I've also seduced and had sex with women on missions when that was the only way to get the intel we needed. I even had sex with the daughters of a Columbian drug lord one time to get him enraged enough to miss the fact that we were slipping away with all of the young girls they had been holding for ransom. He didn't notice because he was raging at and shooting his own men for screwing his niñas, as that was what I convinced them to tell him. They were close to my age and they were very willing participants, but I did use them for the mission. How is what you had to do any worse than that?"

"How did you know what I was thinking about?"

"The guilt and shame on your face were the same as when you were telling us about that yesterday. Uncle Roan may be an incorrigible lothario, but he knows his business better than anyone and he's been training me since I was eleven."

She put her arms around his neck and hung on for grim death. He wrapped his arms around her, and it was the only time a man had ever held her when she was dressed anything like this and hadn't tried anything. When he gave her a gentle kiss that was all about love and caring and nothing to do with passion or desire, there was one word shining through all the shit in her head. " _ **Home!**_ "

He gave her another squeeze and kissed her on the forehead before going back to making their breakfast. To get her mind off what she had been thinking about, he started talking about the plans to bomb the Pacific Security League Conference. He brought up General Stanfield and the other notables who would be there, and she agreed that that sounded like what they'd been looking for.

Chuck called Ellie and Anna to come down to get their input on the idea (as Ellie was just as good as he was at this side of things and Anna was no slouch either). Ellie took in how Sarah and Chuck were dressed and raised her eyebrow slightly. Sarah caught that and blurted out. "No! I came to ask Chuck if he wanted to go out for breakfast this morning but he insisted on making our breakfast here!" That got her a slightly relieved nod from Ellie.

Ellie knew Chuck better than the others, so when he'd laid out what he'd found and planned, she asked him what Auntie Di's thoughts on the plan had been. Chuck talked them through what points Auntie Di had brought up, and there wasn't much of significance that they hadn't already discussed, but Ellie knew that he never went into anything with just the surface plan, so she asked what background plans he'd put in place.

That was going to be easier to show than tell, so they went to Chuck's office to do that. When Sarah walked into the office, she just stopped and stared. Except for the multiple screens, the desk and the wall behind it looked typical of a high ranking military officer's, but the other walls were covered with certificates and citations and pictures of medal awards, promotions and induction ceremonies with a lot of very important people and the like. With anyone else, she wouldn't have believed that these were all real, but she was coming to believe that anything was possible with Chuck.

As he brought the information up, Chuck explained the purpose and where it had been slipped in. The girls were angry at first when he explained that he'd removed any record of Charles Bartowski getting his degrees from Stanford under another name, even though he was cleared of the false cheating charges, so it looked like he was a loser who just gave up. Ellie's mind worked much like Chuck's though, so she asked what else he'd set up, laughing as he showed them the psychiatrist reports about how fragile he had been ever since he failed to get his degrees and walked in on the girl he was about to propose to having sex with his room mate in his bed.

Sarah turned on her and demanded to know what was so funny about Chuck being portrayed in this way, but Chuck reached out to take her hand in an attempt to calm her down. He just shook his head and said. "You can." when Ellie asked. "Are you going to explain this to her?'

Ellie shook her head and turned to Sarah. "What my evil genius of a little brother has been doing is setting up the guarantee that Graham will have to assign you to work exclusively with him, and that he won't be able to assign you any seduction missions. As he mentioned yesterday, he hasn't been seen with any women since Stanford except for me, his sister, Anna, his well known lesbian friend, and two young daughters of family friends. Therefore, with quite a few people seeing him with you last night and tonight, looking happy, friendly and even a little romantic, word that he's been seen with you will be spreading very quickly, especially with those other bitches from last night whining about the fact that he wouldn't do anything with them but was all cozy with you on twitter, facebook and instagram. Those psychiatrists' reports are saying that Chuck has been nothing more than a rather rickety house of cards ever since he was betrayed by Larkin with that frame up job he did on him, and then had the even bigger betrayal of finding Larkin screwing his almost fiancé in _his_ bed, so even a whiff of any further betrayal would almost certainly cause a total break down and render him useless."

She shook her head again with a smile. "Most of this is for _after_ you guys save the day tonight… "

At that she stopped and looked at Chuck. "I presume that, you being you, you had Auntie Di contact the ones in charge of security for the conference and they wouldn't really do anything to act on the warning because we had nothing but a rumour to give them?"

He nodded. "Of course!"

Sarah looked from one to the other. "What are you talking about Ellie?"

Ellie smiled at Chuck. "No matter how much is riding on this for us, Chuck wouldn't put all of those people at risk without at least making an attempt to get the conference cancelled or moved. The fact that we're still running with this is the proof that those warnings were basically ignored, if they had acted on the warning he would have found something else to use. They might tighten the security a bit more, but the Serb's one of the best in the business, that won't be enough to stop him…. Anyway, as I was saying, most of this is for _after_ we use tonight to sell Graham on the fact that Chuck can provide the best value by staying out in the world, and that too many highly placed people would be asking questions they don't want asked if he suddenly disappeared. The purpose of _this_ is to lock _you_ into the team, and prevent Graham from assigning you missions that involve seduction in any way, shape or form. Sometime tonight, while you're being monitored, Chuck will admit to you that he's seen information about you and your missions under a pile of different names, and tell you enough names to prove that. He'll also tell you that he doesn't care about that, and we both know that the sincerity of that statement will come through because it's true. We'll also need you to assure him that he can trust you at some point after that. Graham won't like the fact that he's seen enough in the Intersect to recognise you under whatever name you use at all, but he'll see the fact that he's obviously fallen under your spell as proof that you've got him under your control. That's where all of this comes in." She waved at the screen.

"When they're negotiating the terms of the joint operation that Graham is going to be made to swallow tonight, Auntie Di is going to bring out this information that her analysts had discovered, and use that to demand that you be dedicated to this project and are _never_ assigned to any outside or seduction missions, because if Chuck ever found out about that, it would destroy the trust he'd placed in you. According to all these psychiatrist reports, that betrayal would destroy him, and in doing that, disable our only access to all of the intel that our and our allies' intelligence communities have been combining in the Intersect Database for the last two and a half years, because CIA Agent Bryce Larkin, the same Bryce Larkin who had almost destroyed Charles Bartowski with what he did at Stanford, had destroyed all of the Intersect computers, databases and records when he stole the Intersect. What Graham won't know, of course, is that Auntie Di will be filling in the the Director of National Intelligence, and through him the President, on all of this tonight…."

Ellie paused. "I'm sorry Sarah, we should have told you about the history of our groups before this. You see, Auntie Di has been reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense since the mid-nineties, when the achievements of our groups caught his eye and he called her in to explain how they could do all of that. That's why the Secretary of Defense has known about and approved our multiple identities and activities since then, as has the President. Of course they don't know that Chuck and I are around fifteen or sixteen years younger than all of our identities, but as they met us when we were teens, they do know that the ages must have been adjusted. After nine eleven, our groups were expanded and our profile increased to the point where Auntie Di was also reporting to the National Security Advisor on Intelligence matters. They developed a good working relationship and friendship and kept up their contact when the then National Security Advisor became the Secretary of State."

"That meant that when the Director of National Intelligence position was created earlier this year, he was briefed by the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor _and_ the President on the importance of the Special Projects Group, and Auntie Di began reporting directly to the DNI rather than the National Security Advisor on Intelligence matters. What this means is that Graham has no idea that Auntie Di has rather more influence with the DNI and the President than he does, and they will listen to her when she presents all of this information to them later tonight. That way, she'll go into that meeting tomorrow with you, Casey and Graham with them in her pocket, and probably watching the meeting. She'll push Graham into the position where he will refuse to give up the right to assign any missions he likes to you and that's when Auntie Di will either call in the DNI, or he'll step in himself to protect the integrity and access to the Intersect data, and that's where _that_ proposal comes in." She pointed to what was up on one of the screens.

"Auntie Di will probably have to do a bit of tap dancing to explain to them how her people had come up with the mandate to create the Human Intersect Project, completely outside of the current lines of command in the intelligence community so quickly, but she'll probably be able to explain that away on the basis that it's basically just a modification of the existing Special Projects Group mandate. What this mandate does is put all members of the Human Intersect Project under the sole command of Auntie Di, as the Director of that project who in turn only reports to and takes orders from the DNI and the President, so once she manoeuvres Graham into the position where he insists that you will do whatever he tells you, whenever he tells you, as a CIA agent, the DNI will come in and force him to permanently assign you to the Human Intersect Project."

"In there you'll retain all of your authority as a… oh nice Chuck, CIA _Special_ Agent and will be officially attached to the only CIA group that's authorised to operate within the United States, but you will not be under the authority of anyone in the CIA and you can't be recalled to the CIA unless the Director of the Human Intersect Project and the DNI officially sign off on it. Casey will also be attached to the Human Intersect Project, in addition to the Special Projects Group. Analyst and support functions are going to be provided by the Special Projects Group, which will tie the two groups together and let us use our existing military and agency support agreements. OK, Chuck's also put himself into the HIP as a Field Analyst, which will get around a lot of the bullshit that's attached to being a civilian asset, and add another pay cheque to the family income."

Something else had caught Ellie's eye, but she decided to let that be a surprise for Sarah when this panned out. Sarah might have seen it, but she looked a little lost in the tsunami of information that she'd been hit with.

With the knowledge that they had the foundations in place for what they were going to do, Ellie suggested that Sarah go and get changed into something a little less distracting so that they could get through what they were supposed to do today, reminding her that she needed to organise the accommodation that it had been too late to sort out the previous night. Seeing both Ellie and Anna hug and kiss Chuck before they left, Sarah decided that it would be OK for her to do the same, but that made her want to stay a little longer, so she asked what the divider along one wall was for.

Chuck grinned. "The gym. This is my main work room, so I spend much of the night in here. We've got the main gym down in the Dungeon, but having some gear in here means that I can have a bit of a workout while I'm thinking through a problem. As this is my Special Projects office for video conferences, that can't be out on show, so we put the divider there to give the impression that the office could be opened up for bigger meetings."

Sarah nodded as that made sense, thanked him for breakfast and left with another kiss to go out and get a place to stay. As this was all going to change soon, she just booked herself into a nearby hotel for a few days.

* * *

When Chuck turned up at the hotel to pick her up in the Summit Wagon, Sarah almost laughed at it, but she stopped and had a good look at it, knowing what this family, her family, was like and saw the same things that Ellie had seen on her Lancer. As they were being monitored, they just kept up light conversation on the way to the hotel where they were having dinner, right in front of the conference rooms where the Pacific Security League Conference was being held. Chuck had inserted a reservation for a specific table that he could watch both the main doors and the service entrance from, and Casey was in a bar nearby in the hotel so he could crash the party on the pretence that he'd been following Chuck to get a chance to grab him, but held back when he recognised Walker with his target.

Sarah was a little surprised when Chuck didn't raise the points that Ellie had been talking about over dinner, but trusted him to bring them up at the right time. They kept the discussions in line with what would be expected in view of the fact that CIA and NSA analysts were listening in, but Chuck could see that Casey was going to be paying for the way he was baiting him and Sarah over their earwigs when she _wasn't_ being listened to.

As the time for General Stanfield to take the stage drew closer, Casey gave up on the digs and said that they had to get in there, because the bomber must have set up the bomb earlier or come in some other way. They were just dawdling over dessert, so it paying up and leaving was quick and simple, even with Chuck trying to pay as the guy.

Casey intercepted them outside the restaurant and told Chuck that he was coming with him, showing Sarah the pistol he had ready under the jacket draped over his arm when she went for her bag. Casey kept up the type of dialogue expected of him. "Bartowski, we know that Larkin sent you the files he stole, but if you cooperate and hand them over you might still get out of this OK."

"I. I can't! The files are gone! I opened what he sent me to see what the bastard had to say for himself and I saw all these images. I must have passed out because the next thing I knew I was on the floor and my sister was trying to wake me up. My computer was totally fried, so I had no way of working out _what_ he sent me, but ever since then I keep seeing strange things when I see or hear something on the news or something…."

He looked at Sarah. "That's why I suggested we come here, sorry, I saw things about a security conference here tonight when I saw this General on the news, like the plans for the hotel, the plans for something that looked like a bomb and some European guy, from Serbia I think, so I thought if I saw him I could tell the cops and get him stopped….. Wait, that's him, the Serbian guy who just went into the conference, we have to stop him!"

With that, he wrenched his arm out of Casey's grasp and ran for the doors of the conference room. When he burst into the room he was immediately covered by a dozen guns and he froze. Sarah and Casey burst in moments later, but they had their agency credentials out and were waving them around to identify themselves. When they'd been accepted, he growled. "Where's the guy who just came in here?"

The security team pointed at Chuck. "No! The one who came in before him!"

When they said. "No-one else has been in here in the past twenty minutes!" he turned to Chuck and growled. "What are you playing at Bartowski?"

Chuck answered him distractedly as he searched the room. "He has to be here somewhere, and if I let you take me away there'd be no-one to stop him…. There! There he is!"

Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, Chuck had forgotten that Casey wasn't his only audience, and as he blurted that out and pointed to the server who was heading for the door rather quickly, the security team shouted at him to stop. This, of course, didn't do anything good, and he just reached for something in his pocket. Thinking that he was reaching for a gun, they opened fire at him, and put him down, but Chuck didn't think it was a gun he had been going for.

Chuck ignored the body that he knew would now be laying in a rapidly expanding pool of blood as he projected the path the Serb was taking in reverse to work out where he came from, and that was when he saw the large covered food cart. He ignored the others as he headed for the cart, but when he opened the top of the cart, and then the laptop that was nested in among all the wires there he heard them exclaiming. "Fuck!" in unison with him, because the sixty second timer on the screen was almost half gone.

Even though he had a good idea what would be in there, he parted the hangings that covered the main body of the food cart and heard another dismayed "Fuck!' from Casey and Sarah, because the rest of the cart was absolutely packed solid with what was undoubtedly extremely powerful plastic explosives.

Chuck returned to the laptop up top to try and find some way to disarm the bomb, because there was no way to evacuate the room, let alone the hotel, in thirty seconds. Unfortunately the setup had been made as tamper proof as the Serb normally made his bombs, but then Chuck noticed something else, the laptop being used for the arming mechanism was a Prism Express, a common cheap laptop that he recognised because they'd seen piles of them in the past few days as their design was particularly susceptible to the Irene Demova virus that was currently going around due to the low level overrides built into them.

That gave him a desperate hope and he jumped to get into the laptop, then connect it to the hotel's WiFi and start a browser window, searching for Irene Demova and opening the site that he knew was serving the virus. The counter was down to seven seconds when the screen started to get scrambled by the virus and it took another four or five seconds before the laptop shut itself down.

They all held their breath for the next thirty seconds or so, only letting them out when it seemed safe to assume that the bomb wasn't going to go off. Chuck accepted the none too gentle punch to the shoulder and gruff. "Don't puke on the C4!" from Casey for what it was, relief at _not_ being blown up. He and Sarah were also clinging to each other in relief to be alive, because the three of them knew better than anyone just how close they'd come to _not_ being alive.

 **A/N: Not much action in this one sorry. As the name says, a good part of it is meant to lay the foundations of what's going to happen when they have the meeting to have determine what the Intersect team is going to be.**


	7. Now You See It, Now You Don't

**Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.**

When Chuck saw General Stanfield headed their way, he grabbed his phone and activated the jamming function, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Casey doing the same thing and nodded. When it came to making sure that Langston Graham didn't hear the upcoming discussion, there was no such thing as overkill. They could easily explain away the bugs dying by saying the bomb disposal guys had set up jammers to block any signal from getting through to the bomb….. Come to think about it, they still had hundreds of pounds of explosives sitting there attached to a bomb that hadn't exactly been disarmed, so that wasn't a bad idea.

It occurred to Chuck that he didn't know whether the Bomb Disposal Squad had been called in yet and he looked at Casey. The nod he got from Casey reassured him a little, but the voice he heard came from General Stanfield.

"It always creeps me out to watch you two having a conversation without speaking. Captain, Colonel, can someone explain what happened here tonight and why there's a large bloodstain in the carpet over there please?"

Chuck nodded to him. "Evening General. Well the short answer is that I was having dinner at the restaurant that's just outside and I happened to see a Serbian Bomber entering via the service entrance. I called John and he _just happened_ to be in the bar, right here in the hotel, so he joined me and we entered the conference room to locate the Serb. Unfortunately, your security guards heard me identify the Serb and challenged him, which just made him go for the remote arming device… Damn, Casey, we don't want anyone playing with that, just in case!"

Casey nodded and took off to secure the arming device. The General asked. "Did you say 'bomb'?"

Chuck nodded and surreptitiously pulled aside the cloth to show him the explosives. The General went white and whispered. "Fuck me!" and turned to call for the cart to be removed but Chuck hissed. "General!" at him sharply. When he turned back, Chuck quietly said. "Casey has called in the Bomb Squad, and considering that that amount of explosives could bring down the hotel and the bomb hasn't actually been disarmed yet, I think it would be best to leave it to the experts, don't you?"

"Is it _your_ Bomb Squad that's coming?"

Chuck nodded again.

"Yes, well in that case I concur."

"Now would you care to tell me the _real_ story about why you're here? You rushed in here, pretending to be a civilian and Colonel Casey and this lovely lady flashed their credentials to stop the guards shooting you. There was no way that you _just happened_ to be at the restaurant right across from the conference room, any more than Casey _just happened_ to be in a bar right here in the hotel. Let's just pretend that I'm bright enough to understand what you tell me."

"Yes Sir. I apologise Sir."

Stanfield waved that away. "I know that you will have your reasons Captain Carmichael, but I think I need to know what really happened here."

Chuck nodded. "We uncovered word that the Serb had accepted the contract to bomb the conference here tonight while you were on stage. General Beckman passed on the warning to the security detail for the conference but they refused to do much without hard evidence. I was in L.A. to see Sarah and Casey, well you know how he thinks I can't go anywhere without getting into trouble..."

He had to grin when Stanfield pointedly looked at the massive bomb they were standing next to, but continued without a pause. "So he came along to keep an eye on me. When Johnson brushed off the General, we decided to combine a date with keeping watch for the Serb, but he somehow managed to slip in without me seeing him so we came into try and locate him. The security team heard me identify him and, well you saw what they did. By the time we located the bomb, the timer that the Serb started when the security team shouted at him was down to thirty seconds so there was no time to evacuate and the bombs the Serb built are too tricky to disarm quickly, but luckily my current cover job is as a computer repairman."

Chuck waved at the laptop in the rat's nest of wiring on the food cart. "There's a nasty virus going around at the moment that's coming from a fake porn site, and these cheap laptops are particularly susceptible to it, so I hooked it up to the Internet and pointed it at the fake porn site, which managed to fry the computer in time."

Stanfield shuddered. "So you effectively stopped a bomb like that with porn? I probably don't want to know this, but how close was it?"

Chuck's expression belied his light tone as he said. "It wasn't that close General..." But he capitulated to the look Stanfield was giving him. "Two or three seconds."

Sarah came moved back into his arms for comfort and Stanfield shuddered again at that. "You prevented a major catastrophe here tonight Captain, and I'll be making sure that you and your companions are recognised for that!"

Chuck kissed Sarah on the head before he released her and stepped forward to speak quietly. "We can't let you do that General. As I said, I'm currently under cover as a civilian, Chuck Bartowski. My girlfriend is CIA and and is here on an assignment of her own and… well our relationship is neither known nor sanctioned."

Stanfield looked from Chuck to Sarah and frowned. "I'm not happy about this Captain. Alright, I'll stick to the public story that you, Chuck Bartowski, was having dinner and somehow recognised this bomber and came in after him, and how you disarmed the bomb, well that doesn't give anything away and it's too crazy a story not to tell. But I _will_ be talking to General Beckman and the Secretary and you _will_ be getting recognition for this, all of you!" He looked at Sarah. "That being said, I haven't actually been introduced to this lovely lady?"

Sarah held out her hand. "Sorry about that General, it's Walker, Sarah Walker."

"Glad to meet you Miss Walker, and might I say, it's good to see our boy here with someone like you?"

That got him a confused look and he chuckled.

"The Captain here was a Lieutenant Commander when I met him seven years ago, and I've watched women throwing themselves at him ever since. Not one of them could ever turn his eye, now I can see why. When he has someone like you, he wouldn't have even seen them."

Most people who thought they knew the Ice Queen would have been shocked to see her blush furiously at that, as she stuttered. "Oh no, we haven't..."

Stanfield raised the hand that he hadn't released since he shook it to his lips and said. "Please Miss Walker, don't try to bullshit a bullshitter, anyone can see what you two mean to each other, and I really am glad to see that he has you. Your boy is all business all of the time, being that focussed in action means that more people get to come home, but it isn't good for him to be like as a constant state. I think this is the first time I've seen him this relaxed, and we're standing next to a bomb that could bring the whole building down!"

They laughed at that, Casey joining in as he'd returned with the remote arming device in time to hear Stanfield's talk with Sarah, and he gave a nod of approval at what the General said.

The Bomb Squad came bustling in at that time and Chuck filled them in on the bomb, who made it, how they stopped the timer and the fact that it wasn't disarmed as yet, then left them to get their job done. General Stanfield asked them for copies of their pictures and report on the bomb, to deal with the ones who'd discounted the threat without putting any measures in place in case it was real.

When they stepped away from the Bomb Squad, General Stanfield looked around to confirm that no-one was in earshot before he spoke. "OK, officially, I debriefed you because I wanted to know what the hell was going on. I'll go along with the story that Chuck Bartowski, a civilian, somehow recognised a Serbian bomber looking suspicious and rushed in here to try and stop him. For some reason, he was accompanied by Sarah Walker from the CIA and…." He looked at Casey. "John Casey, NSA." Stanfield nodded. "John Casey of the NSA. After the security team challenged the bomber and shot him when he reached for something, Mister Bartowski somehow identified the bomb and ran to it. You discovered that there was only thirty seconds left on the timer and when the Agents couldn't work out how to disarm the bomb, Mister Bartowski had a crazy idea and managed to disable the laptop used for the arming mechanism with a porn virus, stopping it with seconds to spare. Is that the story that you want me to use?"

The three of them nodded, muttering 'Yes Sir!'s.

"OK, that's what we'll go with officially, but as I told you, I _will_ be talking to General Beckman and the Secretary about you two, and I will be talking to the CIA about you as well Agent Walker to make sure you get proper recognition for what you did here tonight, unless that causes problems for you?"

Sarah looked at Chuck, who glanced at Casey with a grin. Sarah matched his grin and turned back to the General. "No, that should be OK General, you see my assignment here actually involves Colonel? Casey, so turning up at the same time as him shouldn't be a problem."

Stanfield nodded. "Right, then helping save all the notables who were here from a bomb like this should be worth an Intelligence Star, and that's what I'll be recommending to the CIA!"

He was graced with a smile that lit up the room as Sarah said. "Thank you General!"

With that, he went off to demand to know why soon to be _**ex-**_ Major Johnson, who'd been in charge of the security arrangements for the conference, not only disregarded the warnings given about the suspected bombing attempt, he had also failed to notify General Stanfield or the other senior officers that those warnings had been received.

They had a quick discussion about what they'd say once they got outside with the jammers off, and after confirming that the bomb squad had activated their own jammers they turned theirs off and left.

* * *

Sarah and Casey put on a good show for those listening outside, arguing about who would get Chuck, until Chuck cut them off. "Stop! I'm not going anywhere! I'm sure that that General inside will want to ask me more questions, and if I disappear just after I stopped the bomb that would have killed everyone in the hotel from what those bomb guys were saying, they know to ask John Casey of the NSA and Sarah Walker of the CIA what the hell happened to me, and I don't think your bosses would be too happy about that, would they? Look, you need me more than I need you so… Leave me alone, I'll talk to you tomorrow, but for now I need time to think about all of this." With that he turned and walked away.

Casey and Sarah argued a little more and then called their respective bosses. They didn't know whether their communications were being monitored so Casey and Diane stuck to the script, other than the wrinkle that Chuck had just added with the fact that he knew that General Stanfield would be asking questions if he disappeared, which took the option of grabbing him and spiriting him away off the table. That was something that Diane and Casey were thrilled about, of course.

Sarah had a harder time with Graham, because he was determined to have the Human Intersect in his sole control, so at first he ignored the arguments about how much he could do if he was out there to use the Intersect the way it had originally been envisioned, and the fact that as Chuck had said, General Stanfield would ensure that a full investigation would be launched if the saviour of tonight suddenly disappeared, and his history with the CIA wasn't good, so if Chuck supposedly turned up dead, he'd be demanding proof that it was him, and investigating how he died if it was.

Graham eventually came around and conceded that they couldn't get away with grabbing Bartowski and disappearing him, and that he'd probably have to work with Beckman and her people as well. He gruffly told her to keep an eye on Bartowski and he'd talk to Beckman, then hung up without another word.

Under Graham's orders, Sarah had 'planted' a tracking bug on Chuck along with the other bugs when she met him earlier, but she knew where he was going anyway, so she went to his car and pretended to use the CIA tools to break into it and hotwire it (he'd actually slipped her the keys earlier so that she could get past the security systems in the Summit), and followed him to the beach in the Summit. She sat and watched him for a while, then took her boots off and went down to join him.

They talked for a while, and then Chuck dropped the bombshell Sarah had expected earlier. "Sarah, I knew you were a CIA agent. When I saw you, all these names and pictures and reports came flooding into my head. That's why I just stood and stared at you, I wasn't blinded by your beauty, well I was because you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, but I was just getting overloaded with all of the information I was being hit with."

Sarah looked at him. "Chuck, what… What did you see?"

"Everything I think, well it seemed like everything, I saw reports and pictures and videos of what you'd done on all of those missions, they all had different names, you were Elana Truffaut, Eva Anderson…." Sarah let him go through more than thirty names before she quietly said that yes, she had been all of those women and he went on. "Yeah, I could see that they were you. I have to admit, it was a shock to see and read about what you did as all of those women but..."

He reached out to gently pull her face up to look at him. "None of that matters…. You've done some terrible things, but I'm sure you were made to. I see _you_ , Sarah Walker, and that's not who you are. I'm not sure of what the rules for something like this are, but if we can, and you want to, I really want to get to know you, the girl, no the woman that you are, because I like you Sarah, I really do!"

Sarah didn't have to fake or hide the heartfelt smile that she gave him then, because the bugs were audio only and there wasn't any angle to catch her face from, but she did have to be careful about her words. "I like you too Chuck, and I'd like to get to know you as well. I don't know exactly how this will go, but I need you to do something for me..."

"Yes?"

"Trust me Chuck, I promise to do what I can so we can get to know each other and see where that goes, but I need you to trust me!"

Chuck nodded. "I do Sarah, I do trust you!"

In the CIA operations room where they were monitoring the feed, they laughed about the fact that the Ice Queen had snared another sucker, and what an amazing actress she was, to be able to put that much emotion into what she was saying when she didn't have a heart, but that didn't mean anything to the couple on the beach. One conscious thought managed to get through the happy glow that consumed Sarah at that point, that the CIA had no idea that _they_ were the ones who'd just been played, she and Chuck had meant everything they said to each other, but the CIA, and Graham, would see her as masterfully getting the mark under her control. Graham would see that as a good reason to agree to the joint operation that Beckman was demanding, because with the geek under Walker's spell, he'd have control of the Human Intersect.

Chuck dropped Sarah off at the hotel an hour or so later and went home. A message was waiting from Auntie Di to say that Graham had agreed to a joint CIA/NSA operation to determine how the Human Intersect could be utilised in live operations, and that the operation would have to remain in L.A. due to the visibility that Bartowski apparently had there. As planned, she and Casey would be having a meeting with Sarah and Graham first thing in the morning. Sarah and Casey would be going into the FBI's Los Angeles field office to use their secure video conferencing facilities.

With everything in play, Chuck sat down and got started on the work that had built up over the last couple of days. Diane called him when she got up in Washington, as was her want when they were working on anything big, because she knew that it was a good bet that he'd be up, and working. They had a laugh about the fact that General Stanfield had already contacted her and the Secretary of Defense and was determined that both he and Casey would get the Secretary of Defense Medal for Valor for stopping that bomb and saving all those people, and the hotel itself. Neither of them were surprised to hear that Graham had had a similar call about Sarah being awarded the Intelligence Star for her part.

* * *

Nearly six hours after Diane called Chuck, Sarah was meeting Casey at the FBI field office. As they knew that Graham had his hooks into people in the FBI but didn't know whether he had anyone in L.A. or not, they kept to the rather prickly civility that people expected to see as they were led to the secure video conference room that had been allocated for their meeting.

They skipped over what had already been agreed, that it would be a joint operation, based there in L.A. because the asset was well known and had connections to highly placed people. Diane put up a token resistance before buckling and agreeing to Graham's insistence that Sarah would be playing Bartowski's cover girlfriend so that she could be close to him at all times.

That was when Sarah told them that Chuck had offered her a job at Charlemagne if it was decided that she would be staying on. When Graham wanted to know why that hadn't been on the recordings, she said that the bugs had been planted on his jacket, and he'd thrown the jacket into the boot when they left the beach because he'd been sitting on it and it was covered in sand. Graham was suspicious about this, but he couldn't argue that having her working with the asset would be good for the assignment and agreed.

His suspicions rose when Diane said that she'd managed to contact the building owners to investigate why it had suspiciously high levels of security, and had sighted proof that they had added the security when they remodelled the building to create a high security storage company that could be certified for government use if they wanted to pursue government clients in the future. She added that her facility security contractors had looked over the designs and signed off on the security as being above most secure government facilities.

Diane had to fight to keep a straight face when she dropped her bombshells, that the Shamrock Security company that was located in the building was also owned by the same company that owned the building, and she had not only secured employment for Agent Casey with Shamrock security, she had also managed to secure the apartment next to Mr Bartowski's for him, because it had been vacated recently and they hadn't found another suitable tenant yet. Her dig about using the apartment for the team's base of operations was another bitter pill that Graham had trouble swallowing, but he reluctantly agreed that it made the most sense.

Her expression of detached interest as she asked about Agent Walker's living arrangements showed more acting ability than anyone knew she possessed, as she would have fooled them if they didn't know better. Graham fell for the bait hook, line and sinker. "Walker will be set up in a serviced apartment at Maison23, but that will be a strictly short term thing, as she will ensure that she has moved in with the asset and is keeping him under her control within the month, two at the most!"

She almost thanked him for that, and after glancing at the screen to confirm that Sarah remembered their plan here, and was OK, she asked. "Have you read Mister Bartowski's file Director Graham?"

"I've looked at it, what's your point General?"

"Perhaps if you'd read it more carefully you would have realised that attempting something of that nature would ruin the entire operation!" She paused to extract a couple of files that were both several times thicker than the single folder that the CIA's analysts had provided to Graham. Pulling the top paperwork out and dropping it on the desk in front of Graham she continued.

"In May two thousand and one, Mister Bartowski was framed for cheating by his room mate and supposed best friend, Bryce Larkin, who I believe was a CIA Agent up until Agent Casey shot and killed him after he stole the Intersect files and destroyed everything in the Intersect Facility? Mister Bartowski was summarily expelled from Stanford without any investigation or being offered any chance to plead his innocence. Coming back from that meeting, he walked into his room to find Agent Larkin having sex with Bartowski's long time partner, Jill Roberts, who Mister Bartowski was about to propose to, and to make matters worse, they were having sex in _his_ bed."

She glanced at Graham before she continued, adding other paperwork to the pile in front of him. "Mister Bartowski had a breakdown over that, and even though the university reversed his expulsion and offered him the opportunity to complete his degrees after they did the investigation they should have done in the first place, he was in no state to do so. As you can see, it took considerable psychiatric help for Mister Bartowski to get past this and be able to function again, but it has left him a very fragile young man."

Graham growled at her. "What's your point General?"

She dropped more paperwork in front of him before she answered him. "My point is that since that day at Stanford, Mister Bartowski has not had _any_ relationships with any women other than his sister, the young daughters of family friends and his lesbian friend Anna Wu. The psychiatrists have likened him to a house of cards, and the agency psychiatrist who looked over all of these reports has presented the professional opinion that any further betrayals, no matter how minor others may view them to be, will invariably lead to a total breakdown and make him unable to function as the Human Intersect."

She turned to face him. "So my point, _Director_ , is that if Agent Walker attempted to screw him into submission as you've just ordered her to, she would almost certainly cause another breakdown of the Human Intersect, one that the experts tell us would take him a very long time to recover from, if ever! In simple terms, what you're proposing would almost certainly destroy any chance of our accessing the only version of the Intersect that exists since your agent blew up everything else!"

"Who the hell do you think you're talking to Beckman?"

"I'm talking to my _**co-**_ director of both the Intersect Project and this operation Director Graham, and you would do well to remember that I'm your equal in both of those roles!"

She fixed him with a look that showed that the famous red-headed temper was no myth in her case and continued. "Now that _that_ idea has been put to rest, we do have some things going our way in this matter. By all reports of the… ah… dates of the past two nights, even though Mister Bartowski has refused to be anything close to intimate with any woman since May two thousand and one because of Larkin and Roberts, he appears to be quite taken and comfortable with Agent Walker. None of the experts can understand how this happened, the best suggestion they can come up with is that she might remind him of someone he was close to as a child, because from what we could discover, she's nothing like anyone he was close to since then, but this can work in our favour, providing we have certain safeguards in place."

She looked at Sarah. "Agent Walker, in view of Mister Bartowski's deep seated trust and betrayal issues and fragile state, the only way that your participation in this operation can work is if you are willing to commit to never being in any circumstances, on mission or off, that could be construed as a betrayal of his trust by Mister Bartowski."

Sarah looked at her, confused. "I don't understand ma'am, what are you talking about?"

"No missions involving _any_ form of seduction, unless perhaps you and Mister Bartowski have discussed and agreed to it prior to the mission. Also, if you are dating or are engaged in any kind of activities of a compromising nature with any men other than Mister Bartowski, it can _only_ be done in private locations where you are _absolutely certain_ that you cannot be seen or recorded, so there is no possibility of Mister Bartowski can ever discover it."

Even though she was sure she didn't want to do anything like that with anyone but Charlie, Sarah didn't have to entirely fake her outrage at being _told_ that. "What? You're telling me that I can't ever go out to dinner or dancing or heaven forbid make out with anyone other than Bartowski? So I'm supposed to be his personal slave am I? Keep him happy and never touch or talk to another man? How is that any different from what Director Graham ordered me to do?"

Diane put her hands up to try and placate her. "That isn't what I was saying at all Agent Walker! I'm sorry, I didn't phrase what I said very well. I would _never_ order an agent to seduce someone like that, what I trying to say is that the psychiatrists have all told us that Mister Bartowski will almost certainly crumble and become useless as the Human Intersect at the slightest sign of betrayal. All the references that have been dredged up in regard to when you were out with him over the past two nights have said that Mister Bartowski seemed quite fond of you and liked your company… well there were some unflattering social media posts from girls who were unhappy that he liked your company better than he had their's when he was out drunk on a previous night, but the gist was that he obviously likes you. Now with what happened with Agent Larkin and the girl he was going to marry, our experts all agree that if he grows any closer to you, seeing or hearing about you being with another man would almost certainly cause another breakdown, and that would lose us the only version of the Intersect information that we have, now that Agent Larkin has destroyed everything else. So I'm sorry, but what I'm saying is that the only way that we can afford to have you continue in this operation is if you can make that commitment until after the operation is finished."

Sarah looked at her for a while. "I apologise for my outburst General, I misinterpreted what you were saying. I have no doubt that those reports say what you say they do, and on that basis I can understand your position. In view of that, yes, I can give you the commitment that I will never do anything on mission or off that would cause Mister Bartowski to regard it as a betrayal of his trust."

Graham was staring at the screen, and appeared ready to explode. Diane knew they had him when he spat out. "Don't make promises you have no authority to make Walker! You can be a nun in your private time if that's what you want, but when you're on a mission, you'll do exactly what I tell you to! You also appear to have forgotten yourself, _General_! You may share the lead for this operation, but you have _no_ authority to tell CIA Agents what they will and won't do on missions, _I_ will give my agents their orders, and those orders _will_ be followed! I'm not going to let you use some Californian new age _therapist_ 's waffle to try and take control of this operation or my agents!"

"I am well aware that I don't generally have authority over CIA Agents Director Graham, but I _do_ have the authority to enforce whatever conditions I deem necessary to ensure that Mister Bartowski, as the Human Intersect, remains in a state that allows us to access the Intersect information that he alone has access to. What that means is that without that specific commitment for Agent Walker she, and therefore the CIA, will no longer be involved in the Human Intersect operation."

"Don't try to threaten me Beckman, you won't like what happens! Under who's authority are you trying to take control of this operation?" He didn't doubt that she would have been authorised to do so by the Director of the NSA, but he had things in place to shoot _that_ down. What he wasn't prepared for was for the screen to split in two or to see the face of the man who said. " _ **M**_ _ **ine**_ _ **!**_ "

No, Graham wasn't at all prepared for the Director of National Intelligence to suddenly pop up from where he'd obviously watching and listening to say that she was doing this under on _his_ authority.

The DNI's expression didn't bode well for Graham at all. "Director, I have been watching and listening to this meeting because General Beckman had concerns about getting the necessary agreements for this operation to be conducted in a manner which would give us a reasonable expectation of success. I am not happy to see that her concerns were quite valid, especially as I assured her that I was confident that the CIA would do everything necessary to ensure that success. You made a liar out of me Director Graham, that does not bode well for our future working relationship."

He looked at Graham for a while longer. "Have you read or listened to any of the information that General Beckman presented to you about Mister Bartowski? I must presume from your responses that the answer is 'No', because if you took any of it in, you wouldn't have said what you did."

The DNI then turned to look at the Los Angeles screen. "Agent Walker, I can assure you that what General Beckman said was in those reports on Mister Bartowski was accurate, and what happened at Stanford was only the last straw. He had lost both of his parents before he was fourteen and he and his sister were taken in by a friend of their late mother's, you met her two nights ago I believe, the lady they call Auntie Emma. She did what she could for them but money was tight, so they had to work to help her make ends meet from when they were still children. The only way they could go to university was by earning scholarships, but they both worked hard and got their scholarships, and they did very well at university as well. Then, just before Mister Bartowski graduated and had a chance to live the life he deserved, a disgusting individual in collusion with one of his professors framed him for cheating and had him expelled. Then, to add insult to injury, he walked into his room to find the girl he was about to propose to having sex with his supposedly best friend who'd just ruined his life. The fact that they were using _his_ bed must have been intended to hurt him even more."

"I am not surprised that he had a breakdown over that, and in fact I'm surprised that he recovered as well as he did, but the fact remains that he is, and will continue to be, very fragile in regards to matters of the heart. Now as the General said, our experts were astounded by the reports that were gleaned from the Internet about how he interacted and responded to you, but they were also concerned about how vulnerable to you that makes him. Please understand that we are in no way trying to pimp you out to Mister Bartowski, we have no intention of asking you to do anything with him that is not your choice. All we are asking is that you be a friend to him, if you are comfortable with that, and that you commit to the conditions the General raised earlier. Are you still prepared to make that commitment Agent Walker?"

Sarah looked at the screen and promptly responded. "Yes Sir, I am."

"Thank you Agent Walker. Now the General has an agreement there that spells out what we have discussed, you have my personal guarantee that it doesn't say anything that we haven't talked about."

Diane placed the document in front of Graham as the DNI continued. "Director Graham will sign the agreement, then it will be sent to you in Los Angeles to sign, and then it will come back to me. I will also sign it and hold it as a binding agreement of these terms. Does everyone understand and agree to this?"

Sarah said "Yes Sir." but she was almost drowned out by Graham saying "No Sir!"

The pleasant expression that the DNI had been directing at Sarah turned stony as he addressed Graham. "What do you mean 'No' Director Graham?"

"I cannot give up my best agent to an operation of this nature Sir, I will supply another agent who will comply with these terms but it cannot be Walker."

"Well that answers the question about whether you were reading or listening to the information Director. Both the General and I have discussed, and you would have read if you were so inclined, that Mister Bartowski has apparently bonded more with Agent Walker than he has with any other woman other than his sister and his lesbian friend in well over four years. We have also explained and you've seen the reports about what the acknowledged experts expect to happen in the event of another betrayal. Now just how do you think Mister Bartowski would react if Agent Walker, who he likes and gets on with, was suddenly replaced with a woman he's never met and we have no idea whether he can get on with and he's told 'This is your new girlfriend'? I think it would be summed up in one word _**'Betrayal!'**_ Agent Walker, are you, personally, comfortable with agreeing to the terms that we discussed here?"

Sarah was looking a little confused and worried. "Yes Sir?"

"Thank you Agent Walker. Director Graham, I cannot fathom your position on this, you are well aware of the importance of the Intersect to our intelligence operations, and now that one of your agents has destroyed the Intersect facility, Mister Bartowski is our only way of accessing the Intersect information. You have been presented with ample evidence to support what is required to enable the Human Intersect team to operate effectively and yet you have repeatedly refused to cooperate. Therefore, I am forced to order you to release Agent Walker to be seconded into General Beckman's Human Intersect team until such time as General Beckman and Agent Walker agree that she is to be released from the team."

Graham gaped at him, he never thought that the man would have the gall to try to _order_ him to release his best agent. "I'm afraid that I can't do that Sir. Agent Walker is the best I have, and I cannot in good faith deprive the CIA of her services."

The DNI looked more determined than he'd ever seen him. "Stay right there Director, I will be there shortly to straighten this out." With that he disconnected the link.

Graham turned on Diane. "I don't know what you think you're playing at Beckman, but I can assure you that you will regret this!"

Turning back to the screen he barked. "Walker! Get moving, I expect you on a plane to D.C. within the hour and in my office in less than seven hours!"

Unfortunately for him, the DNI had walked in in time to hear that. "That sounded suspiciously like you have wilfully defied _both_ of the orders that I just gave you Director Graham!"

"With due respect Sir, neither were lawful orders, you do not have the authority to order me to release my agents to another group or to tell me to sit here and wait for an indefinite period of time."

"I can see that I'm going to have trouble with you Graham. For a start, if you bother checking the powers of my office you will find that I _**do**_ have the authority to give you those orders, but to forestall further debate, do you recognise _this_ signature?" With that, he slapped the document in his hand down on the desk.

That question didn't need an answer, of course Graham recognised the President's signature! Graham groaned to himself as he looked through the document, he should have agreed to that bitch's terms for Walker to work on the team! That way she would have at least still been under his control, and she would have returned to her general duties as soon as this farce finished.

 _This_ way, he lost Walker for good, she was totally out of his control, answering only to Beckman, and the document stipulated that she had the right to resign when the project finished, or any other time Beckman agreed. On top of that, while she stayed on the CIA's books and he was being forced to promote her to a Special Agent, no-one in the CIA could give her any assignments or orders. He also saw that they had added another section at the bottom, where Beckman would sign to say that she witnessed him refusing to sign for his acceptance of the order if he didn't. He grabbed a pen and savagely slashed his signature across the document, half hoping it would ruin the document but at the same time worrying about the ramifications of wilfully destroying a Presidential order.

The DNI said "Wait!" when he went to storm out of Beckman's office, and signed the form, handed it to Beckman to sign and then separated it into the three copies, handing one to Beckman and the second to Graham, saying. "I expect to have confirmation this afternoon that this has all been processed properly Director Graham. And by the way, this is another order that the President signed, apparently General Stanfield was quite effusive in his praise for Agents Walker and Casey's part in disarming the bomb and saving everyone in the hotel last night, especially all of the dignitaries who were at the Conference. The President agreed with General Stanfield and signed the orders for Agents Walker and Casey to get the medals that the General recommended. Apparently Mister Bartowski is getting a medal as well. We will expect the medal and documentation to come through today with Agent Walker's new credentials that show she's a Special Agent attached to the National Resources Division as well as Clandestine Services. Well we won't hold you up any more Director Graham, good day."

Graham managed to be almost civil as he bit out. "Yes Sir, it will be done today. Good Day." and stormed out of the office.

The DNI chuckled, and then froze, muttering to himself as he turned to face the screen. "I must apologise Agent Walker, I just realised that we did this without consulting you. You have just been effectively permanently transferred from the CIA to the Human Intersect Project as a CIA Special Agent who is authorised to operate within the United States as well as abroad. Do you agree to this? If not I will make the necessary arrangements to cancel this, though I must warn you that Director Graham is unlikely to be in a good mood if you return to the CIA."

Sarah was having trouble keeping a straight face as she replied. "That's quite alright Sir, the situation was a trifle tense and I can understand how you missed that one point. I got the gist of the terms that I was being transferred to the Intersect Team under and I am quite happy with the transfer, thank you."

He smiled. "Good, now seeing as you're all Intersect Team members now, I would suggest that you head back to use the more secure facilities you have at your base." He turned to Diane. "Diane, when can I expect to hear about the other agents that you're looking to add to the team?"

She glanced at the screen. "I have to discuss it with Agents Walker and Casey Sir, hopefully I'll be able to tell you whether they have agreed or not within the week."

He nodded. "I'll look forward to hearing from you. Diane, Agent Walker, Agent Casey, good luck with your new team." With that he walked out to their goodbyes.

Diane looked at the screen. "Why don't you two get back to the office and we'll pick this up there. Sarah, if you want to swing by the hotel to check out, that's fine."

They nodded and said that they'd call her soon, just before the link was disconnected.

* * *

Sarah went to ask Casey what was going on but he put his finger to his lips before waving it about, and she nodded. As they left the building, she said that she'd see him at the office after she checked out of her hotel. It wasn't much over half an hour later that she arrived at the office, because she wanted answers.

Chuck was busy with his day job, so they went into Casey's office and initiated the link to Diane. The first question she asked was. "Are you OK with this Sarah? I know that you had an idea of how it was going to go yesterday morning, but we didn't really ask you when we rammed it through."

"It's fine, really, I'm just confused about a few things, like what I'm actually going to be doing and where I'm going to be living?"

"You'll be doing what you were doing before, just with a lot less seduction, torturing and killing, and more real intelligence work. As far as where you'll be living, you basically have two choices at the moment. You can either stay in the apartment there where you stayed the first night, or you can take one of the apartments in East Pasadena where Casey and Jeff are. At a guess I'd say that Chuck would prefer you took the apartment there because it's more secure."

Sarah had to smile at that, as that idea certainly appealed to her for a number of reasons, but she wanted to hear more about these other apartments. "Why weren't the apartments in East Pasadena mentioned before?"

It was Casey who answered. "I can take you out there and show you if you like. We bought a small block of apartments when the group was growing and remodelled them. The security was improved, but it's nothing like what we have here. Originally Bry, Ellie, Jeff and I had the apartments there, but Ellie moved in here with Anna when this was done up and Bry moved into the house in Arcadia with Emma when he came back in two thousand and four, so two are empty at the moment. I was going to be moving in here too, but with Graham out of the picture, I guess I don't need to now?"

Diane just shook her head and he continued.

"We generally try to keep at least one apartment empty there in case we need to use it for an operation, but they may be taken up by these new people. That's what I'd like to hear about!"

Diane nodded. "Yes, this would be a good place to address that. The proposal that Chuck put together and the President and DNI have signed off on has two other agents joining the team under the same conditions as Sarah did, one from the DEA and one from the FBI. Chuck has suggested two names but said that Sarah is the one who knows them the best..."

Sarah looked thoughtful as she asked. "What are the names?"

"Well he doesn't think these are their real names but the ones he has are Rosalia Zambetti from the FBI and Anja Lundgren from the DEA."

Sarah laughed. "No, they aren't their regular identities, those were just created for one assignment, albeit it went for two years."

"Do you believe that they would be a good fit for the group? Who are they anyway?"

"Yes, I think they'd be perfect, except for one small issue, they're two of the three women I worked with on the CAT Squad and they were a good match for me."

"What is the issue?"

"Casey may have a problem working with one of them, they're Carina Miller from the DEA and Zondra Rizzo from the FBI."

The "Oh, Hell No!" blurted out by Casey confirmed the issue.

Diane looked at him. "Who do you have an issue with John, what was it about and will it prevent you working with her effectively?"

"Agent Miller Ma'am. It was six years ago in Prague. I said some things I shouldn't have and she left me handcuffed to the bed. I would have worn that because I knew I deserved it, but she sent the pictures of me, handcuffed naked to the bed to everyone she knew, which included nearly everyone _I_ knew! I spent years trying to live that down, and people are still bringing it up. No Ma'am, she was a damned fine agent when she wasn't being crazy, and she was crazy on her own time. As long as you keep her away from handcuffs I won't have a problem working with her. I'm prepared to take Walker's assessment of Rizzo."

"It looks like we have a plan then. Sarah, can you contact them and see how soon we can meet them to discuss this, preferably here in Washington so I can be involved?"

"Not a problem Ma'am. How much do you want me to tell them?"

"As little as possible, I don't want to risk anything getting out before we have a chance to talk to them."

Half an hour later, Sarah had set up a meeting in two days time at a club in D.C. that they'd often gone to when they were in town at the same time. The other two, especially Zondra, called her more than a few uncomplimentary things when she told them that she needed to talk to them about something but refused to say what it was.

* * *

On the appointed night Carina and Zondra noted two things when Sarah came up to them, First, as hot as she looked in those tight jeans and top, she _wasn't_ dressed to tear the town up, so this wasn't going to be one of their usual wild nights. The other thing was possibly more interesting though, because she hadn't come from the front door, she came from one of the private rooms.

That was why she was met with. "What are you up to Blondie?"

"Damn, you two really know how to make a girl feel wanted!"

Zondra's temper was a tad shorter than Carina's. "Whatever, cut the bullshit. A week ago, you were desperate to sneak into the States to try and find your mother. Now you're here in D.C. and acting like everything's OK, in fact you're happier than I've ever seen you. And who's in that private room?"

They looked at each other as she glanced back at the room in question with a smile, she was _definitely_ up to something!

Sarah was more serious when she turned back to them. "OK, have things improved for you two, or are you still treated like shit by the bastards you work for?"

Carina and Zondra looked at each other again, and Carina answered this time. "Of course everything's still shit! You know that's never going to change, what are you getting at Sarah?"

"Would you like to change that?"

"Are you high or what Blondie? What the hell are you talking about?"

"Just what I said Zee, do you want it to change? Because if you do, all you have to do is go in that room!"

"I think you're crazy, but if anyone can do the impossible, it's you. Come one Red, we're off to see the wizard!"

Carina hopped off her stool and hooked her arm through Sarah's. Zondra was caught up in it enough to take Sarah's other arm and they all skipped their way to the door of the private room.

Once inside, Carina was shocked to hear the cute guy who she didn't know saying 'Oh fuck no!" when he saw her, rather than Casey, who she'd expected to hear it from it from.

Zondra was staring at the guy who apparently recognised Carina in shock, and Sarah, Casey and the older woman were looking at him in confusion.

Carina tried to cover up her hurt by dropping into the Man Eater act as a defence mechanism, slinking over to him and purring at him as she ran her hands over his shoulders. "Hey, don't knock it until you've tried it Cutie, and don't believe what Johnny Boy says, he just didn't like to lose..."

She stopped when he reached up and gently took her hand to pull her around so he could look at her. "Sorry, but there's three things wrong with what you said. First, John has never said anything to me about you. Second, I'm sort of taken and have been since I was a little kid. And third, I don't do that with family and you're my first cousin."

Now everyone was staring at him in shock, but he turned to the older woman in the room and spoke in a much colder voice. "Why did you give her up?"

She looked shocked. "No! It can't be! Roana? I thought you were dead?"

"I asked you a question Auntie Di!"

She looked down at the table, unable to meet his eye, or look at the woman who was apparently her daughter. "I. I wasn't as strong as your mother Chuck. I was barely in my twenties and my parents were going on about the shame I was bringing on the family by having a baby to some man I didn't even know. My uncles were screaming at me because they'd called in a lot of favours to get me the intelligence career I wanted and now I was going to throw it all away to become a mother to a baby who'd have no man's name. I let them talk me into giving up the baby when she was born, and they arranged for a remote posting to hide me away so that no-one would know that I was pregnant. I left right after Ellie's christening."

"I had the baby and gave her up to a nice couple and then returned to the mainstream postings. I saw Roan a few months later and broke down and told him that we had a beautiful baby girl but I'd given her up for adoption. He was so angry! He said if I'd just told him we could have made it work. With him beside me, I was strong enough to stand up to my family and we went looking for Roana, but we were told that the entire family had died in a house fire. We investigated the fire, in hope that she survived, but we gave up after a few months without finding any trace of her."

She finally looked up at her daughter. "I'm sorry Roana, I didn't want to give you up but I wasn't strong enough to stand up to my family."

Chuck gave the hand he was still holding a squeeze and quietly said. "Don't be too hard on her, our family was so bad that _my_ mother ran away to Russia when she was fourteen!"

Carina looked at the woman who was apparently her mother and then back at the guy. "So what was I called? And you seem to somehow have the answers, so what's the rest of my story?"

"You were called Roana Mary Beckman, your first name is from your father, your middle name was the same as both of our mothers'. You were rescued from the fire, but had no known family so you went into the foster care system. Unfortunately you suffered the same fate as many girls in the system and the abuse probably kept escalating up until the point where you were raped by your foster father when you were twelve. You killed that bastard and ran away, teaching yourself what you needed to live on the street. You must have been pretty good because you were rarely caught, those times you were it was for pick pocketing, burglary, safe cracking and confidence games. In ninety eight you were caught by a group of rich jocks while you were cleaning out the house after you'd gained entry by way of a party. They gang raped you, but you managed to get your hands on an ice pick and killed them all."

"Unfortunately you were too badly knocked about to think to get the security tapes and were caught, but it was for multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon causing death this time. Even more unfortunate, you caught the eye of Langston Graham and he grabbed you for his program. As you didn't have anyone to use as leverage, I presume that he had some threat that was vile enough to ensure your compliance. You obviously crossed him somehow though, because when you finished your final training at the Farm, he immediately traded you to a buddy in the DEA, and we don't need to dredge up what they forced you to do there."

Sarah and Zondra were looking from Carina to Chuck and back. Aside from the fact she was Diane Beckman and Roan Montgomery's child (even Zondra knew both of _those_ names), what Chuck was saying explained the way Carina had developed frighteningly well.

When he finished, Chuck looked at Carina. "That was about it, wasn't it cousin?"

She collapsed into his arms, breaking down and crying with more anguish than Sarah and Zondra had ever seen her show before. Diane, Sarah and Zondra weren't in a much better state after what they'd just heard. When the tears died down, Sarah could see that Diane was in no state to run this, so she did.

"I think we need to get this done so we can get the two of you out of here. What we're here for is to offer the two of you places on a new team that we've just started, you'll retain your identities and authority as DEA and FBI agents, but you will _only_ take orders from General Beckman, you won't be under the authority of your agencies any more. These transfers will also be permanent unless you choose to go back for some reason, and you will be free to resign at the end of the project, or before that with the General's agreement. We will be based in Los Angeles, sorry Red, I know what you think of L.A. but I can guarantee you two things, the first is that you'll never have to screw filthy pigs so that some other pig can get his jollies off from it ever again. The second is that what you'll be working on will be more important than anything you have ever done before. General Beckman is the Director, and the team is made up of me, John Casey, Chuck, our field analyst, and hopefully you two, so are you in?"

Zondra spoke up. " _Mowgli_ is our fucking _analyst_? What are you pulling here Blondie?"

"Yes Zee, and he'd also the Piranha, remember what he did for you, for all of us, when they tried to frame you? Chuck wears many hats, but in this team, he's officially a field analyst. Once again, are you in?"

Carina and Zondra looked at each other, turned back to Sarah and said. "Yes!" in unison.

Diane had pulled herself together enough to take charge again. "Right then! You need to collect your things tonight because you're going back to California with the rest of the team, I'll get your orders signed off and then we'll get everything else processed, but for now, welcome to the Human Intersect Project."

Carina spoke up then. "I don't want to rain on your parade… General, but there's no way the DEA will let me go, there isn't anyone else who will do what I do for them."

Diane dug out the correct form and pushed it across the table to her so that she could see the President's signature on it. "They don't have a choice! The Director of the CIA has already buckled to this and released Sarah from the CIA, the DEA is nowhere as strong as the CIA. We don't envisage any problems with the FBI's Director, he's one of the good guys."


	8. What Doesn't Destroy You, Makes You Stro

**There's an unpleasant section starting about a third of the way through. The start and end are marked if people want to skip it.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.**

Langston Graham was fuming, as he'd not only lost the best agent he had (possibly the best agent he'd ever seen) to Beckman, but he'd also lost all control of the only viable Intersect host as well. In all the testing they'd done on Project Omaha, no-one else had ever had even shown a fraction of this Bartowski's compatibility with the Intersect. All of the formal test subjects were either killed or made into vegetables when they tried to load the Intersect into them.

Roark had been certain that Kowalski had loaded it into himself just before he started to really fall apart. If so, he'd certainly handled it better than any of their other test subjects, but he _had_ shown damage straight away and deteriorated steadily over the next twelve to eighteen months before he disappeared, and it was a good bet that he'd gone off to die then as they hadn't seen any sign of him in the past thirteen years. So, even if he held out longer than the others, he'd still been destroyed by it like the rest of them. This Bartowski though, all the signs were that he was handling the Intersect with no problems at all, and what he'd loaded would have been many, many times larger than any of those test loads.

He had to find some way to convince Beckman to let him have Bartowski tested, so that his people could determine what markers that identified a viable Intersect host. He was prepared to let her keep him, because while this Bartowski may have an incredible brain, he was obviously weak if those reports that Beckman had on him were accurate, and someone that weak just wasn't suitable to be a proper Intersect host, he just needed the markers to locate a proper host.

Letting Beckman manoeuvre him into the position where he'd lost Walker to her infuriated him even more, mainly because he hadn't seen it coming. He'd always viewed Beckman as your standard petty little military empire builder who was beneath his notice. To him she'd been someone who had lucked out by taking over a great team from someone else, but hadn't shown any special ability herself. _Now_ it was obvious that that had all just been an act and he'd fallen for it like everyone else.

He wasn't about to let that stand. No, Beckman was going to pay, and destroying her flawed Intersect host would obviously be the best way to topple her off her perch. If he couldn't get Walker back under his control, well she'd have to be disposed of too, he'd put a lot of effort into forming her into the weapon she was and he wasn't about to allow anyone else to enjoy the fruits of his labours or even worse, use her against him.

Graham had to concede that Walker wasn't likely to fall for the threat that he could get to her mother at any time any more without proof, as she'd undoubtedly find some way to get those damned analysts of Beckman's to investigate the hints he'd given her over the years about where her mother was, now that she was under Beckman's umbrella. Unfortunately, what that meant was that the only possible leverage he had over her now was her father. As flimsy as that leverage was though, she _had_ stayed with him up until she finished high school, so she appeared to have had some attachment for him. With that in mind, Graham started putting together plans to have 'Jack Burton' released and point him at his daughter. Give them time to reunite and build an attachment again, then hopefully Burton may be usable as leverage over her.

The news only got worse a few days later when the senior people he had inside the DEA and FBI reported that they'd lost Miller and Rizzo in the same way he'd lost Walker, which meant that Beckman's Human Intersect team now had top agents from all four of their primary agencies. This was what he had envisaged for Project Omaha, a team of very strong agents to support the Intersect host, except that the Intersect host was meant to be at least a competent agent, capable of driving their missions, not some weak, broken civilian like Beckman had.

It would only be a matter of time before her civilian Intersect host, and therefore her Human Intersect team, failed, but he wasn't in the mood to wait and see. No, he could see himself getting considerable amusement from throwing things at them to _make_ Beckman's Intersect host break.

* * *

They were still in the private room, talking, a couple of hours later, by which time Diane had cancelled the jet that was to take them back to L.A. that night, rescheduling it for first thing in the morning. Chuck and Casey spent the night at Diane's place, while Sarah went back to help Carina and Zondra pack for the move to Los Angeles, and get some of her own things as well. At least they didn't need to get rid of the house, or even pack it up, because it was one of the safe houses that the three of them shared.

Much of the night at their house was spent making sure that Carina was OK about the rather shocking news she had just received, and her and Zondra questioning Sarah about Chuck. That questioning escalated after she shared that another name Chuck was known by was Charlie, because they had spent two years hearing about _Charlie_ while they were on the CAT Squad together.

Of course, the fact that she'd found her Mama and that she had been safe and well all the while Graham had been holding her safety over Sarah's head took up a lot of the discussion, that Sarah's saviour from the warehouse had been her stepfather since just after that was talked about quite a bit as well. Having Carina's mother as her godmother wasn't passed over either. They spent most of the night talking and neither Sarah or Zondra were impressed with how bright eyed and bushy tailed Carina was in the morning. Zondra groaned when Sarah told her that not needing much sleep was apparently a family trait that Carina got from her mother.

The car that they had at the D.C. safe house was one of the new Dodge Chargers, so it had no trouble carrying the three of them and what they were taking to Los Angeles. Even if Diane _was_ Carina's birth mother, they weren't ready to give up their safe house to anyone yet, so they drove to Diane's house and left the Charger there. They'd be taken to Andrews AFB from there in Air Force limos.

Meeting her father for the second time when she arrived at the General's house was a shock for Carina, but none of them were surprised when Diane accompanied them to Andrews and told them that she'd be coming out to Los Angeles as soon as she had the transfers and arrangements bedded down. After they'd taken off, Carina looked around the C-21A and asked if this was how they normally travelled. Sarah deferred to Chuck and Casey as this was only her second flight with the team, but her eyes bugged out like Carina and Zondra's when Chuck casually answered. "Yeah, unless we're on a time crunch, then we have to take an F-15 with a few in-flight refuellings. These business jets are a lot more comfortable though."

That prompted another question from Sarah. "Chuck, I noticed that the guard at the gate called you Colonel Conrad and Casey Major Coburn, what was that about?" He glanced at Carina and Zondra but decided that they were part of the family now, especially Carina. "They're our Air Force identities, it's easier to use them when we're coming onto an Air Force Base, especially as we're usually coming onto the base to grab an F-15."

"But how are you a Colonel, while Casey's only a Major?"

"Because my Navy and Air Force identities are commanders of cyber intelligence and intelligence groups and I got more promotions on the basis of the achievements of those groups."

Casey cut in there. "And your combat achievements!"

Chuck nodded. "Yeah OK, but you've got plenty of them too."

Carina and Zondra were looking confused at that, but Sarah told them that they'd understand when they saw what was in Chuck's office.

* * *

Partway through the flight, they saw that Carina was getting upset about something, but she wouldn't discuss it with anyone but Sarah. The others tried to give them space to have a private talk, as much as they could on the small Learjet.

When they were alone, Carina got straight to it. "Was my father part of that _training_ that you and I were forced to go through at the Farm?"

Sarah stared at her briefly, then shook her head. "No!"

"How can you be sure? He was teaching _seduction_ for fuck's sake! How would he not be involved in the sex training?"

"Because, if you remember, he always taught us that if you have to resort to sex to get what you're after, you've failed!"

She hesitated, and then added. "And because I had the same suspicions and I confronted him about it when he butted into a video conference that we were having with your mother to tell me how glad he was that I'd found my way back to the family at last. Red, he was _horrified_! Not just because I could believe that he had been a part of it, but that I had been forced to go through that at sixteen….."

She broke off at the horrified look Carina was giving her. " _ **Sixteen?**_ I thought you were seventeen when I met you at the Farm?"

Sarah shook her head. "No Red, I was fifteen when I met you, though I'm pretty sure that Graham knew that my father had added two years to my age on my last few identities because he knew who my parents were. Oh hey, my father was a CIA agent too before he ran off to be a con artist, and Mama was their top analyst."

" _ **What?**_ "

"My father was a field agent, but he got kicked off field work because his overblown ego made him too erratic to be trusted. When that happened, he took me and disappeared, partly to hurt Mama, but mainly because no-one would expect a sweet, innocent little girl like me to have all the skills I did by the time I was seven so I could play them better than any adult. The CIA wouldn't release Mama, because she was too valuable to them. Auntie Mary and Uncle Bry were CIA agents and were working with your parents to get her out, but Auntie Mary was trapped back in Russia a year later and Uncle Bry ended up in almost as bad a shape as he was after Milan, so only your parents were available to do most of it. That slowed them down, and it wasn't until Uncle Stephen disappeared that they were ready to get her out. They created a new identity for Mama that showed that she was Ellie and Chuck's godmother, because she was their mother's best friend up until their parents died, well that was true except for the names they were using and their parents being dead, to get her granted custody of the two of them and set them up with new identities in Arcadia. That was how they got the three of them away from the CIA."

When it appeared that the private section of the discussion was finished, Zondra came over to see what Carina was shouting about. She was gob smacked when Carina said. "Oh, Sarah just told me that she's actually two years younger than she always told us she was. Oh, and both her and Charlie's parents were CIA Agents."

Sarah jumped in to correct that. "No, Auntie Mary was an agent, Agent Frost actually, and so was my father at one point. Mama was an analyst and planner, their best apparently, but the only times she saw action was when she was a field analyst. Uncle Stephen was apparently the CIA's top scientist and developed their technology for them."

In her rush to straighten that out, she had missed the fact that she'd just dropped another bombshell, until Carina asked. "So Charlie, _your_ Charlie, that cutie over there, is actually the son of the CIA's greatest legend?"

"Yes, and she was training him, Ellie and me in whatever we could take in from when we were toddlers. _They_ kept getting training from her, Mama, Uncle Bry, Casey and your parents after my father took me away, but I was getting trained by my father in the subjects Roan teaches from when I was a little girl, up until Graham got him."

Carina and Zondra looked at each other. "Well now we know why no-one's ever been able to touch her, except for _Charlie_ maybe."

"Oh I don't know, you two have done pretty well for yourselves, you're a force of nature Zee, and we now know that Red comes from the same bloodlines as Frost, Mowgli and Raksha. I'd bet that with a bit more work on your skills you could match us, or at least come close…. And you two are going to _love_ the training facilities that they set up there!"

Zondra snorted. "I'll withhold comment until I see them Blondie, they were set up for what, three or four people?"

"Seven, actually, and I doubt that even you'll be able to maintain your famous disdain when you see it Zee."

"We'll see…. So, have you finished your private discussion now?"

Carina looked at her, upset, and then grabbed her hand and pulled her down into the seat in front of her. "It wasn't you Zee, it was my father, you see..." She stopped and looked at Sarah, who nodded. "When we were at the Farm, both Sarah and I were forced to go through very intensive physical sex training, and when I saw him this morning…. I suddenly remembered _what_ he taught at the Farm and wondered whether he had had a part in that…. But Sarah said that she'd asked him and he was absolutely horrified, both that she thought that he'd be part of that, and that it was done to her when she was sixteen….."

 **Extreme unpleasantness starts.**

She looked off through the window with tears in her eyes as she continued in almost a whisper. "I'm weak, just like my mother, when she was sixteen, Sarah had the guts to tell Graham that if he sent her into another situation where her only option was to fuck the mark, either she or the mark would die, but I was never brave enough to say that to him. Graham had plans to turn both of us into perfect sexbots and killer robots. He was holding her mother's safety over Sarah to force her compliance. I don't think he knew who my mother was at the time, but even if he did, he would have known that I'd have no love for the woman who abandoned me to all that shit in foster care, so he came up with something else for me. He flew me to Thailand, or somewhere around there, and took me to show me a sex farm. Hundreds of girls and women from all over the world were there, from four to forty to cater for every perversion. They were losing several girls a day, as they were being ripped apart by what was being done to them. As long as their customers could pay up, they could do what they liked to them."

"The dead girls were being fed to the pigs, and then the pigs were in turn fed to the girls, to cut the cost of feeding them. Graham made me watch the girls' bodies being cut up and fed to the pigs, and then told me that if I didn't do exactly what I was told, I'd be sent there. He called over one of the men running the place and told him, right in front of me, that if I was sent there and I was allowed to die, he'd have the entire place wiped off the face of the map. They could do what they wanted with me, so long as I was kept alive and well enough to continue servicing the customers. When he brought me back, I was terrified and I did everything he said, but I just couldn't match Sarah as a human weapon. He kept threatening me to send me to that sex farm until eventually I snapped and screamed at him that I'd never be the killing machine she was. He just agreed and told me that my training was finished and I was going to the DEA, because they had a use for the skills I _had_ mastered, so that's how I became the DEA's number one sexbot."

Zondra's grip on her hand was almost crushing it, but neither of them noticed. After a few minutes, Zondra began to talk.

"You have always wanted to know why I don't trust men, but have respected my wishes for privacy. Well I think we need to go into this with all of our secrets on the table. As you know, I wasn't born as Zondra Rizzo, what my name was before isn't important but where I came from is. My father was one of the top enforcers for one of the big New York crime families so he was quite feared, but like most bullies he was basically a coward. My mother had been a brilliant young woman with a great career in front of her before he stopped that and made her into a trophy wife. Mama was the most beautiful woman in the entire family and the D'Angelo family insisted that she attend all of their functions, because she lit up the room wherever she went. Tony D'Angelo, the heir apparent for the family, desperately wanted my mother and was determined to have her, but his father had an ironclad rule that he wouldn't allow married women to be interfered with. When I was seventeen, my parents took me to one of the big family functions and I caught Tony's eye. I looked just like a younger version of my mother so he decided that if he couldn't have her, then he'd have me. He promised my father a bigger slice of the action if he handed me over to him, but told him that he'd destroy him if he failed to deliver."

She looked up at the cabin ceiling, blinking back tears as she went on. "I don't think my father even hesitated before he agreed, he organised it for the next time he knew Mama would be out. A bit after she left, he came to my room and told me that he'd just gotten a call to ask for Mama to come to a last minute party, but when he told them she was out, they said that I should come in her place. When we got there, I knew the mansion well enough to know that he was taking me to the private wing that only the actual D'Angelo family used and I asked him what was going on. He told me that I'd been invited to dinner with Mister D'Angelo and that I needed to be nice to him. When I said that I wouldn't do it and I wanted to go home, he told me he'd kill me if I caused him trouble by refusing Mister D'Angelo's invitation, I could see from the look in his eye that he meant it so I gave in."

"When we got there, there was no dinner, just champagne and strawberries and drugs. When I saw that I tried to back out but my father grabbed me by the arm and told me again that he'd kill me, then he formally introduced me to Mister D'Angelo and left me there with him. This guy was a worse conversationalist than Casey on a bad day, but I tried keep up an inane prattle in hope that he'd get bored with it and throw me out. I was also nursing the drink he gave me as long as I could but he lost patience, so he grabbed me and started groping and kissing me. He got angry when I tried to fight him off and hit me hard enough to knock me out. I came to on a bed with most of my clothes torn off and him tearing into me. It was over almost before it started and then the bastard wanted to talk, or at least he wanted me to tell him how wonderful he was."

"I was stupid, I should have just told him what he wanted to hear so I could get out of there, but I had been a seventeen year old virgin who'd never been kissed before he raped me, I was hurting and I was frightened so I wigged out and laughed at him. I told him that I'd seen Chihuahuas with bigger dicks and more stamina than him and he cracked. By the time his guards came in and pulled him off me I was half dead, and I was torn up inside from the champagne bottle and other things he used in me. The guards' main job was to clear up trouble for the family, so they took me home and told my father to make sure this was kept quiet."

"By the time my mother came home I'd almost died from blood loss and my internal injuries. I later found out that my father had been planning on letting me die and then telling her that I'd snuck out to a party somewhere and had just been dumped at the door in this state. She called the doctor straight away, fighting him off when he tried to take the phone away from her. By the time the doctor arrived with the ambulance, he'd told her the truth about what happened to me, trying to convince her that they'd kill all of us if this went public. Needless to say, that didn't go the way he wanted, because she told him she'd see him _and_ the D'Angelo family in hell for what they'd done to her daughter, and went to hospital with me in the ambulance."

"When I finally got out of surgery and was in recovery and she'd been assured that I was going to be OK, Mama went home to get enough things for both of us to get through the time I was in hospital, and a few other things that were special to us because she had decided that neither of us would be going back there when I was released. She'd already called the feds and done a deal to give up everything she knew about the D'Angelo family in return for protection for the two of us."

"What Mama didn't know though was that rat shit bastard who was my father had gone running straight to the D'Angelos and told them what she'd said about seeing them all in hell for what had been done to me, and the head of the family had ordered his men to get rid of us before either of us could talk. The FBI had a man inside the D'Angelos and he called in a warning that they were sending men to get rid of both of us, so the FBI sent a team to the hospital to protect us. They got there in time to stop the hit squad who had been sent there, but they hadn't considered that Mama would be anywhere but at my side. Unfortunately the D'Angelos had sent more men to our house, and by the time the FBI could get there, Mama had already been raped and beaten to death to send a message to anyone else who might consider crossing the D'Angelos."

"The FBI got me moved in secret to another facility and had the hospital records changed to show that I'd died of complications from my injuries, so as far as the D'Angelos knew they were in the clear. My father told the police the same story he was going to tell Mama about what happened to me, but the police must have been paid off, because they just wrote off what happened to Mama as the result of interrupting a home invasion. Raped and beaten to death in a home invasion that just happened to be the very same night I ended up in hospital from the same thing almost happening to me? Who would believe that?"

"As soon as I was able to talk, the FBI asked me to testify about what D'Angelo had done to me in collusion with my father so they could bring other evidence and charges up, and hopefully get some justice for Mama and myself as well. I agreed, but only if they'd guarantee that I'd go into training with them as soon as I was fit enough to, and if I passed, that I'd be made an agent working on cases against people like my father, the D'Angelos and everyone else like them."

"I got my deal in writing, and we had the trial straight away, I was testifying from my hospital bed to add to the impact. The D'Angelos' lawyers tried to argue that this was a fabricated case as I was listed as dead, but the FBI provided enough medical proof to verify who I was. The D'Angelos still managed to get Tony and my father off because they came up with a pile of people who supported my father's story that I was an out of control party girl who'd been hospitalised more than once as a result of the rough sex I liked at sex parties, and I was just accusing Mister D'Angelo because I had no idea who I'd actually had sex with, but the FBI upheld their end of the deal anyway."

"D'Angelo had done so much damage to my face that I already needed major reconstruction surgery, so we changed my appearance enough to ensure that I wouldn't be recognised. As I'd lost my mother's face, I made up my new name of Zondra from her maiden name of Sondra Zambini, and I chose a surname that had no connection to my father or the D'Angelos. I was motivated to wipe out all those bastards so I aced the FBI's training, and as per our deal I was made an agent at eighteen. By the time I was nineteen I had been involved in bringing down the D'Angelo family once and for all and making sure that Tony and my father went to prison. I was given a slap on the wrist for what I'd done to get the intel out of my father and others, but the black mark was removed from my record after two years' probation. There _were_ some accusations thrown around relating to the gruesome way my father and Tony D'Angelo both died in their cells a few weeks after they went to prison, but I had plenty of proof to show that I had been somewhere else that night. You know what happened after that, and that's my story."

 **Extreme unpleasantness ends.**

The three of them were holding each other and crying when Zondra finished. When she looked at Casey and Chuck, Casey looked worried about what was going on, but Chuck looked absolutely distraught, and Zondra realised that he must have heard something that triggered one of those information flashes they'd been talking about last night. She panicked at that, but Sarah gently took her hand and shook her head. "Yes, he's obviously seen it, but he'll never say a word to anyone about it."

"Not even you?"

"What? No, we're not together, and even if we are later he wouldn't betray your secrets to me or anyone."

"I'll take your word about him keeping my secrets because…. Well I need to believe that he'll keep all of that to himself, but for the other, who do you think you're fooling Blondie? We spent two years listening to you mooning over your Charlie, and every time you look at him it's obvious you're more gone on him now than you were then! As for _him_ , well he's just as obvious as you are, and you heard what he said to Carina!"

Sarah looked at her, confused. Zondra growled in frustration and snapped. "Carina! What did _Chuck_ tell you when you were pawing at him last night?" It only took a second for Carina's confused expression to clear and for her to recite. "I'm sort of taken and have been since I was a little kid."

"Thank you! So as you two obviously _know_ what the rest of us can see, why are you pretending that you don't?"

* * *

With that, she stood and walked over to Chuck, leaning down to whisper to him. "While I don't doubt Sarah's word, it would really help my peace of mind to hear it from you that what you've seen in that Intersect will stay with you Chuck."

He turned to look her in the eye. "You have my word that I will never speak of what I've seen in regard to you to anyone Zondra. I shouldn't have told what I'd seen about Carina to anyone but her, but I was in a state of shock to find she was my cousin and I just blurted it out when she asked."

Sarah and Carina were shocked to see her whisper something else in his ear, and then hug him and return the kiss on the cheek he gave her after he whispered something back to her.

When she went back to sit with them with a big smile, Carina looked at her and said. "What was that about?"

"I haven't had any real family since Mama was killed, none at all since my father's 'accident', and I haven't wanted any except for you two until now. When Chuck said something about being shocked to find that you were his cousin though, something made me say that I wished I was too."

She looked at Sarah. "Hang onto that one Blondie! He told me that I was already family, but if I wanted it to be official all I had to do was say the word and he'd make sure that all the records were in place to show that I was his second cousin. He's even talking about asking his aunt to agree to be my godmother too. It's crazy, I know, but I suddenly felt like I belong somewhere for the first time since Mama was killed, and I felt that she is happy for me, so that's why I kissed your guy."

Sarah laughed and kissed her on the cheek, then went forward to plop herself Chuck's lap and give him a rather more serious kiss. When they came up for air, she leant her forehead against his. "Do you know how happy you've made Zondra?"

"I haven't really done anything yet, but the records will be in place within a day or so. She's had enough shit in her life and you three are like sisters. As your godmother's daughter Carina _is_ effectively your sister and…." He held up his phone to show her the text that just arrived. "Auntie Di has already agreed to being long lost cousin Zondra's godmother too, so we can formalise it when she gets to Los Angeles. Besides, I can't see il Martello di Dio fitting in anywhere better than in our family, can you?"

"For a start, you _have_ done something, you've made her feel that she belongs! You've already laid all of this out and I know that you'll have it all set in place in the next few days to show that Zondra's entrenched as part of the family. You know, once we're all settled in, I think we need to have another family dinner to celebrate all this."

Chuck nodded. "We could set it up for when Auntie Di's here, maybe we could even pull something off to have Uncle Roan here as well."

"I might be able to arrange something there, Aunt Jane should be able to organise for him to be in L.A. at the right time."

"So you're actually close to Jane Bentley? She wasn't just your handler?"

"No, she looked after me and ensured that she remained as my mentor after I left Harvard. She did what she could to protect me from Graham and the rest of those bastards. I… I killed my first handler when he came into my room to rape me one night and Graham knew that I'd do the same to any other guy who tried that, so he decided that the sensible thing was to replace him with a woman. He made a deal with Jane that if she shaped me into the agent I could be, she'd get the DDO's job the next time it became vacant after I graduated. She delivered on her agreement, but she also taught me how to protect myself, and stretched me far beyond the tool that Graham wanted me to be. He wasn't happy about that, but he had to honour his part of the deal because she'd made sure that it was all official and she definitely honoured her part of the deal. She became the DDO when he became the DCI, then a year later she became the first Director of the National Clandestine Service when the DNI's role was created and Graham was pushed back to the Director of the CIA. Anyway yes, to me Jane is almost as much of an Aunt as Auntie Mary is."

"Cool, that should make this easier, and maybe we can sit down and talk to her about building a better working relationship with the CIA through her."

After that, Sarah went back to relax with the girls while Chuck pulled out a laptop and got some work done.

* * *

They made sure to record Carina and Zondra's reactions to the Dungeon, because Zondra had been so certain that Sarah was exaggerating. As Sarah knew the easiest way to motivate those two to stretch themselves, she set up a challenge for everyone to step up and post the best scores they could on the range and the training rooms. Considering who his mother was, the level of training he'd received, the constant practice since he was a toddler and the sheer number of operations he'd participated in, no-one was surprised when Chuck posted the high scores across the board, or that Sarah, Casey or Ellie came in after him, as age and far too many serious injuries had started to take Bry's edge from him. He was still better than most, but he could no longer challenge the very best. The exercise worked as planned though, because Sarah's challenge on the plane had been accepted and Chuck's scores became the target the other two were shooting for.

Sarah took Carina and Zondra to see Chuck's Special Projects office, and they saw what she had been talking about on the plane. Looking at the medals, citations and pictures on the walls and the desk ornaments that displayed his ribbon bars and badges told a story that would have been unbelievable without the background information that they already had on him, and Zondra had seen with her own eyes the sort of thing this man of Sarah's could do.

Carina and Zondra were offered the same choice of apartments as Sarah had been, but they decided to share one of the spare apartments at East Pasadena. This meant that they still had one spare apartment there, and another at El Castello, so that worked out well.

* * *

Diane and Roan arrived a few days after Carina and Zondra moved in, but Diane had had an agenda when she selected her protection detail for this L.A. trip. She had argued that her usual detail of rather large military men would stand out too much in L.A. and had replaced them with five of her best and most trusted agents, Vincent Smith, Sydney Prince, Alexandra Forrest, Richard Noble and Victoria Dunwoody. She also brought in four more agents who she had worked with and trusted, Adam Carter, Eyal Lavine, Michael Westen and Rachel Gibson.

It was true than these agents would blend in much better in California than her normal obviously military protective detail, as they all looked like models, tall, taut and attractive, but that wasn't her primary criteria for selecting them. Even though the Human Intersect team was just starting off and she already had five top agents on the team (well, four plus an analyst officially), she was looking ahead to when the team's workload invariably exploded, just like the Special Projects Groups' workload had exploded as soon as everyone else recognised that they were the only ones who could deliver what was required in difficult times. These nine were the next best she had had working with her that she trusted, and she believed that they would fit in with the family well, so she was using this trip to introduce them to the family and have Chuck, Sarah and the rest of the core team get a read on them. That would hopefully give them a pool of agents who it was agreed would be suitable to be added to the team. They could possibly be seconded onto Intersect missions to see how they worked with the team as well.

With eleven people in the group who came to Los Angeles, they obviously couldn't stay with the family, so they booked into a nearby hotel. On their first visit to El Castello, the protective detail stayed on the ground floor with Jeff and Anna, who were pretending to be civilians. Chuck, Sarah and the others spent time talking with them all that day, and while the Intersect provided the majority of the information about them, the purpose of the discussions was to get a read on who they were, by the end of the first day, the team had agreed that the eight should make good additions.

Once they'd accepted them, they were shown the Dungeons, and like all of their ilk, their eyes lit up at the sight of the range and other facilities there. It didn't take much convincing to get them to see how they did on the range, and given that these were Diane's best picks, it wasn't much of a surprise when they all beat Jeff, Anna and Emma's scores on the range, and came close to Carina and Zondra's (some of the guys beat Carina and Zondra).

They actually held the family dinner in the lounge in the Dungeon, and the nine were included. It was a surprise for them to learn that John Casey and Bryan Mills had teenage daughters, the only things that were kept from them were who Chuck, Ellie and Carina's parents really were, and that Diane was Ellie and Chuck's Aunt. Some of them had worked with Chuck and knew that he was Mowgli, so there wasn't much point trying to hide that, but the link between their family and Diane could be explained away by the fact that Emma was Ellie and Chuck's godmother, while Diane was Sarah's godmother.

* * *

Their pleasant interlude came to an end when an urgent mission came from Langston Graham for the team. When Diane's staff tried to put him off, he insisted that this was on too tight a schedule to be delayed, and it was in Los Angeles anyway. Graham told Diane that there was considerable discussion among the European intelligence communities about a string of suspicious deaths that led from the middle east, through Europe and America, to the last death which was in Los Angeles. While no-one supposedly knew what this was about, it was believed to be something that could effect national security, so he had it flagged as a matter of the utmost priority, and a good test to determine the Human Intersect's abilities.

While something didn't smell right here, Diane agreed to accept the mission, because if this thing _was_ as important as Graham was saying, they needed to deal with it. Possibly even more important in her view though was that this was also a perfect opportunity to see how the nine could work with the core team.

The only information that Graham provided, all he had according to him, were the pictures of some of the some of the dead along the trail of whatever this was to Los Angeles. Chuck was getting frustrated because he wasn't getting anything from the pictures, until Casey inadvertently came to the rescue. Despite the best efforts of Chuck, Jeff, Anna and Alex, Casey remained old school, and he always picked up his morning paper on the way to work. He had been in Chuck's office, discussing the fact that it was obvious that Graham was withholding information on this, but as he picked up the paper and went to leave, an article about a function and art auction that night on the front page of the paper provided the trigger needed to put some of the clues together.

When he saw Chuck being hit with a flash of information from the Intersect (as Chuck was still struggling to suppress his reactions) Casey stopped, and he was quite interested when Chuck brought up La Ciudad, as some of the solo missions Diane had sent him on had related to the hunt for the elusive arms dealer. Under the terms of the charter that had been drawn up for the Human Intersect operation, they were required to keep the sponsor for a given mission in the loop, so they had a video conference with Graham, with Diane patching in from Chuck's Special Projects office to cover up where she was.

They could see that Graham wasn't pleased that Chuck had put this together, but they couldn't refuse his 'help' when they pretended to be worried about getting a gown for Sarah in time for the function. Given that he was playing games, none of them were surprised when the gown that he insisted on providing arrived and it was nothing like the understated elegant black gown that Sarah specified for a mission of this nature, it was a flaming red number that would catch every eye in the room. Chuck said that they could just toss it and get the proper gown but her temper flared up. "No! We're going to show this bastard that we will succeed no matter _what_ he does to try and sabotage us!"

Due to Graham's meddling and the surety that he'd have people watching, they could only get three people into the function, Chuck and Sarah as guests and Casey as staff. They would have Jeff and Anna in the van providing technical support with Bry as backup and three teams of four set up in the hotel for tactical support. Ellie was running the overall operation, some of the nine couldn't work out why it wasn't Bry, as the most experienced agent, but they weren't about to argue with these people.

When Chuck and Sarah arrived at the function, they ran into trouble before they even got inside, because some clumsy oaf was waving his hands about and smeared a canapé on Chuck's shirt. Sarah waited for him there, fending off advances from idiots who thought that her standing there alone meant that she was available, while Chuck went to the men's room to try and clean the mess off his shirt.

While he was in the men's room, a man came up to wash his hands at the sink next to him and Chuck was hit with an Intersect information flash. This flash showed many of the same scenes that Chuck had seen in regard to La Ciudad, so he was certain that this guy had something to do with him, and he might actually _be_ La Ciudad. Unfortunately, the way Chuck froze and appeared to be staring when the flash hit him caught the guy's attention and he snapped. "Do I know you?" at Chuck.

Chuck thought that he'd gotten away with his answer of. "No, sorry, I was miles away, you see I'm really into my date tonight and was trying to impress her, but this isn't a good look and I was wondering whether I should just cut my losses, because I don't see her wanting to go in there with me if I can't get this mess off my shirt. Oh well, guess I may as well just go and face the music, have a good night." before he left the men's room, but he didn't realise that the guy had followed him out and watched as he went straight to Sarah and told her. By the time he told Sarah about his suspicions and turned to point the guy out to Sarah, the guy had looked away and they'd missed seeing that he was onto them.

When Chuck told her that the guy coming out of the men's room may be La Ciudad, they reluctantly agreed that she'd have to work him to get what she could out of him, and the best way to do that would be to play on what Chuck had said to him and have her storm off, angry about how he'd ruined the night. Accordingly, Chuck went to the bar to mope while she set things up to move in on the guy.

Casey knew how hard it would be for both of them if Chuck had to watch this, so he handed Chuck a glass of sparkling water and a napkin and told him to try and get the stain out of the shirt while he watched Walker. Chuck gave him a grateful smile and a nod as he did as he was told, and Sarah did the same as she looked over and read the situation.

If Sarah hadn't been so upset about being thrown straight back into this, and the need to seduce a mark with Chuck right there (she wasn't going to be doing any more than flirt with the man to find out what he knew, but that was bad enough at the moment), she would have almost certainly picked up on the man's reaction as she approached him, and she would have seen the other two men watching her approach, but she didn't.

She knew something was wrong when she engaged the man, as the subtle charm she was pouring on should have had him falling all over himself to talk to her, but he was rather reserved, even a little suspicious. The conflict that she was trying to deal with was the reason she also didn't pick up on the other men's approach until she felt what was almost certainly a pistol barrel pressed into her side. Sarah didn't dare look Chuck and Casey's way for fear of giving them away, but she sure hoped that Casey was still watching.

Casey had actually been distracted, making cocktails for a couple of demanding socialites, but he looked back to see that Walker wasn't where she'd been before, and he just managed to catch her leaving the function room with three men, two of whom were quite close to her but the one she'd engaged was walking ahead of them. Of course, when he told Chuck that, Chuck went to jump up and race after her, but he reminded him that he had to stay here to convince the watchers that he was what he was expected to be, a clueless civilian who'd fallen into this by accident and didn't have any idea about what was going on.

That slowed Casey down, so Sarah and the ones who had taken her had disappeared by the time he got out of the function room. Luckily, they had trackers on all of them and Jeff told them that Sarah was heading upwards. The obvious destination was the roof, so two of the fire teams got up there and hid before they got there.

While they agreed to wait until Casey got there to make a move, it was very hard for Ellie, Bry, Carina and Zondra to wait and watch Sarah being held by one of the men while another one took extreme liberties as he 'searched' her for weapons, spending more time 'searching' inside her pants and bra than he did anywhere else. The one who Chuck had talked to was obviously in charge, but he made no attempt to stop the man taking liberties, if anything he encouraged it.

When Casey burst out the door, Sarah was thrown aside as the three men grabbed their pistols. They ignored him as he identified himself as a federal agent and ordered them to thrown down their weapons. The arrogant bastard in charge actually ordered _him_ to stand down as they were British Intelligence. Casey's response to that was to slowly move his laser sight up the man's body until it lit on the centre of his forehead. "So? This is _America_ , you don't have any authority to operate here and you've assaulted and mishandled an American federal agent. Tell your men to drop their guns before I drop _you_!"

The man sneered at him. "Check with your bosses! We _are_ authorised to be here and you're interfering with an important operation. As for her, she didn't identify herself, we just thought she was working for the ones we're here to get so we brought her up here to get information about them, and if we miss them because of your interference, you'll pay!"

"I won't tell you again, tell your men to drop their weapons _now_!"

The arrogant fool took a step forward. "I told you that you're interfering with..."

He stopped rather suddenly when a three round burst from a suppressed assault rifle hit the surface between his feet and the laser dot rose to join another one on his chest, looking at his men he saw three laser dots on each of his men, though two of the dots on the one who'd 'searched' Sarah were on his privates.

 _This_ time, when Casey barked. "Drop your weapons, _now_!", they complied.

Although it was fairly tall, the figure dressed in black from head to toe that appeared out of the darkness was obviously a woman. She was no delicate little thing though, because when the first of the men wouldn't comply when she moved behind him and Casey barked. "You! Hands behind your back!", she just kicked out his knee and grabbed one hand, and then the other to bind them together savagely with zip ties, she quickly went on to bind his ankles and knocked him forward onto his face to bind his wrists to his ankles with an obviously practised efficiency, slapping duct tape over his mouth to gag him. After watching that, all Casey had to do to get compliance from the other two was to say. "Now you." when she moved behind them. The others came forward as Zondra secured the three men.

The one in charge was still trying to argue that their operation was authorised and that interfering with it would have serious repercussions while Sarah collected her pistol and knives and set them back in their holders, she also had to adjust her underwear to make it sit more comfortably after that sleaze had been fumbling around inside it. When everything was back where it should be, she walked up the the one who had 'searched' her and kicked him in the family jewels, hard!

That felt good so she did it a couple more times for good measure before moving on to the one in charge. "What are you here for and what information do you have about what's going on tonight?" He was still labouring under the mistaken impression that he had authority there. "You're not authorised to know that, and you people are going to be in serious trouble for interfering with an operation of this importance!" Sarah only gave him one kick, as he hadn't been the one touching her, even though he hadn't stopped it, and then she looked at Casey. Casey nodded, they had to get back to Chuck!

Ellie said that they'd get the Brits down to the room to deal with them after, but as Sarah and Casey went to head for the door, she stopped Sarah and handed her the long barrel Glock 20 that was her primary side arm, along with a couple of extra mags, because she had a bad feeling about this. After dumping most of what was in her clutch purse out, Sarah just managed to fit them into it.


	9. Taking Sides

**Sorry if anyone was actually waiting for this, been tied up reading some great stories in other spaces here.**

 **A couple of minor changes to the last chapter to correct oversights, Vincent was added in as I liked the character but the story arc with him was a waste of time IMHO, and I've replaced a marginal CIA agent with someone else from one of Arnie's movies as an ex-Mossad agent. This means that there's an extra guy in the second string, bringing the team possibly to fourteen.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed, and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.**

When Casey went after Sarah, Chuck tried to sit there quietly, but he gave up and threw down the napkin to go looking for something which might hopefully keep his mind off what was going on upstairs. While his mind was churning, his feet led him to what they were supposedly there for that evening, the paintings that were being auctioned.

He stopped in front of the painting that had triggered the initial Intersect flash when he saw the picture in the paper. If anything, the painting was even less inspiring than it had appeared in the paper but something _did_ catch his attention, the fact that the frame had been changed since that picture was taken. _Now_ that he was focussing on that earlier frame, a new set of Intersect flashes came to him, detailing how that frame had been a creation of the British Secret Service years ago for the purpose of getting sufficient plutonium to make a bomb past the normal checks by using the protections being afforded to delicate artworks to prevent intrusive scanning or inspections. He saw how the plutonium was carried in a number of small containers embedded in the frame, the frame that this painting was no longer mounted in.

Chuck was drawn out of his musings by a soft voice at his side. "Beautiful painting, no?" That voice had the promise of being even more useful for taking his mind off what was happening upstairs, because its accents told a very interesting story, Spanish born, but he heard a number of other languages and dialects in it, and they appeared to indicate that the beautiful latina he turned to hadn't spent much time in her native country since she was a teenager.

Thanks to the perfect memory they inherited from their Mom, both he and Ellie were polyglots, they could pick up a new language or dialect in days and they'd been doing that for most of their lives, even more so in the past twelve and a half years they'd been working for Auntie Di, so he could pick up the nuances of accents from a few words now. That told him that _this_ might provide enough of a challenge to stop him charging after Sarah, so he engaged her.

"Pardon? Oh, sorry, I'm not sure it's my thing, seems a bit too Bob Rossian for my taste."

"Bob who? I don't believe that I am familiar with that artist?"

Hmm, curiouser and curiouser, the French, English and Italian influences were expected, even the Middle Eastern ones weren't a surprise, but the Russian or Kazakh ones, now _they_ were interesting. He smiled at her. "I'm sorry, that was meant to be a joke, but I obviously forgot how many people have never seen that stupid painter on American TV, I guess you're not American, huh?"

She shook her head with a smile. "No, sorry, not North American anyway, I am from Brazil. I am Malena, and you are?….."

Ooh, bad girl Malena, that was a lie, and you've spent rather more time down there in Columbia than you have in Brazil for that matter. "Charles, Charles Carmichael."

"It's nice to meet you Charles, I must admit, you're more interesting than most people who come to these things…."

"Why thank you Malena, do you come to many of these things then?"

She looked around, falling for his easy charm against her better judgement. "Unfortunately yes, I have to come to these things to buy stock for my company to sell…..."

At that moment the band struck up the opening movement of the tango and she looked incredibly wistful. "Oh I _**love**_ the tango!"

Chuck smiled. "Who doesn't?"

She turned to him with a hopeful smile. "Do you….?" at his confused look she added. "Tango?"

It was on the tip of his tongue to say 'No', but something stopped him. The more she talked, the better he was mapping out where she'd been, and that was matching up to what was in the Intersect flash he'd received for La Ciudad. If she was part of La Ciudad's party, the more she let slip, the better chance they had of catching him, and if she was La Ciudad's woman... well dancing the tango with her would almost certainly flush La Ciudad out. Concentrating on her would also give him something to think about that wasn't worrying about Sarah, so he smiled at her. "Of course! Would you care to dance Malena?"

She beamed at him and nodded as she took his arm.

As he led Malena onto the dance floor, Chuck glanced around, hoping to see Sarah and Casey had returned, but he was disappointed. Malena was a good and rather….. enthusiastic dancer, but the way she was grinding on him was telegraphing her intentions for what she wanted to follow quite clearly. The upside of where her mind was was that she was more open with her responses, and Chuck was having little trouble mapping out where she'd been spending most of the time, and that was confirming that her movements matched La Ciudad's.

Chuck dipped the laughing Malena at the end of the tango, which caused her hair to swing away from her neck and reveal the nasty scar that she had there. He glanced away to see whether Sarah and Casey were back, but it was also an attempt to cover up the Intersect flash that he'd just had. He now knew that the Englishman who had taken Sarah away _wasn't_ La Ciudad, because he currently had _her_ in his arms!

Chuck made a mental note to ensure that they _always_ had mics, and cameras if possible, on them at all times on missions after this. With the rush to get things organised in what time they had, they had skipped them for this mission because the three of them were supposed to be in the same room the whole time, and Jeff and Anna were hooked into the hotel's security cameras and watching what went on in the function room. Having La Ciudad right by his side prevented him from activating his comms device without her knowledge, so he couldn't let the others know. This meant that the only thing he could do was try to keep her there until Sarah and Casey returned so he could signal them to let them know who the woman beside him was. He had tried mouthing 'La Ciudad' at the security camera, but didn't know whether Jeff and Anna would be watching the right camera at the right moment.

Mindful of what Casey had said earlier about the expected watchers, Chuck knew that he couldn't take down Malena and the guards that he knew she'd have there in front of everyone at the auction, but the kicker was that that meant that he was also unarmed, so he tried to keep her talking until Sarah and Casey got back, trying to find ways to beg off going back to her room as she was suggesting more and more aggressively without making her suspicious.

Any chance of _that_ working went out the window when one of Bryce Larkin's clique of over-privileged fratboy buddies, Alan Watterman, came charging up to him, drunk. "Bartowski! What the hell are _you_ doing here? There's no place for pathetic losers like _you_ in our world! Didn't you get the message when Roberts dumped your arse and moved up to Bryce after he caught you cheating, scholarship boy?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Chuck caught the flash of suspicion that crossed over Malena's face at that, but he tried to get the situation under control anyway. Reaching out, he grabbed a nerve point on Watterman's shoulder, paralysing him with the wave of pain that shot through him. "Alan, you're drunk, I think you should leave before you embarrass yourself any further." Leaning in, he added, too quietly for anyone but Watterman to hear. "If you don't leave, right now without another word, I'll make sure that this pain you're feeling stays with you for the rest of your miserable life! Nod if you understand!"

Watterman nodded frantically and hobbled away as quickly as he could the moment Chuck released him. Chuck tried to explain it away. "Poor Alan, he really has been drinking way too much if he's confusing me with that guy who got kicked out for cheating back at university."

Unfortunately, Malena wasn't fooled for a minute and as he caught her signal and the approach of her rather large guards, he was not at all surprised to feel a pistol barrel being pressed into his back just after she moved in close to whisper in an apparently intimate manner. "You have two choices, Mister Carmichael, or Bartowski or whatever your name really is. You can leave quietly with us now so that we can have a private chat about who you really are, and no-one will get hurt, or….. You can cause a scene and you and a number of the people around us will most definitely get hurt, maybe even killed. So…. Are you going to come quietly without causing a scene?"

Chuck nodded frantically, playing the terrified civilian to a 'T'. Malena smirked suggestively up at him and drawled. "Good!" before taking his hand and leading him from the function room, with her guards following close behind.

* * *

As they left the function room, Chuck swore to himself, because he'd just realised that not only couldn't he afford to make a scene in front of the guests and possible watchers in the function room, he couldn't even afford to deal with La Ciudad and her guards in her room, because the powers that be would demand that La Ciudad be brought in for questioning, and if she was questioned, the lie of him being an inept civilian would be exposed. He was hoping that they'd run into Sarah and Casey on the way to Malena's room, but they didn't.

Once in the room, Chuck was tied to a chair and Malena started asking him questions. Chuck was holding up the part of the terrified civilian quite well as she threatened him with knives and other implements, 'breaking' and admitting that he wasn't Charles Carmichael, he was just Chuck Bartowski, a computer repairman who had been putting on an act to try and impress his date, but she'd dumped him before they even got inside.

Eventually Malena told him to shut up because she believed him and he hopefully asked if she was going to let him go, but she just laughed, saying that she couldn't do that because he'd seen her face and knew who she was. Chuck kept up the scared civilian act but inside he was shaking his head, because this was one sick bitch, she spent ten minutes going over the pros and cons of a number of messy and painful ways of killing him before giving up in apparent disappointment at failing to make him wet himself and coming back to what had almost certainly been her intention all along, making an atrocious pun about 'chuck'ing him off the balcony and signalling the two gorillas she had for guards to do so.

Chuck was making a last ditch effort to talk her out of it as he prepared to blow his cover by breaking free of the chair and taking them out when they heard the guard stationed outside the door challenging someone and Malena signalled the gorillas to drop the chair. Just before the chair hit the floor Chuck threw himself back, twisting as he did so to have it come down on one arm and break it off. Luckily Malena and the gorillas were concentrating on the door where the guard's challenge had been followed by a thump, and then silence, and raising their pistols as one of the gorillas called out. "Bob? What's going on out there? Bob? Answer me!"

Their focus on the door meant that the three standing in the room paid no mind to how the chair had hit the floor hard enough to break something and didn't see that the figure on the floor was presenting the smallest possible target. They also didn't see that he was releasing himself from his restraints.

* * *

When Sarah and Casey ran into the function room, they looked to the bar where Casey had left Chuck. When he wasn't there they scanned the room, expecting to pick him up easily enough, given the fact that he was at least half a head taller than many of the people in the room.

The borderline panic in Sarah's voice as she asked. " _ **Where's Chuck?**_ " over the radio chilled chilled the ones who knew her, because it carried the threat of the emergence of the Enforcer. Anna's "Wait..." was almost pleading as she and Jeff called up his tracker and ran the security footage back.

Jeff blurted out. "Eighth floor!" had Sarah and Casey running out of the function room on the way to the lifts, but Anna's horrified "Oh Fuck!" left them waiting with baited breath. When she didn't continue Sarah spat out. _**"What?"**_

Anna gulped, hoping that someone would be able to calm Sarah down before she got to her. "Chuck was taken from the function room at gunpoint by two gorillas, and the woman he was dancing the tango with about five minutes before. As he left the dance floor with her he mouthed 'La Ciudad' to the cameras…."

Jeff cut in. "Just after he came off the dance floor, he had an altercation with someone he was at Stanford with as Chuck Bartowski, so he may have blown his cover as Charles Carmichael."

"What the fuck were you two doing while this was going on?"

"We were trying to make sure that _**you**_ weren't harmed, because he would have torn this place apart if you were!"

Ellie cut through the impending fight. " _ **Enough!**_ What room has Chuck been taken to, and what room is right above it on the floor above?"

Jeff came back with "Eight nineteen." quickly followed by Anna. "Nine fifteen!"

"Right. Sarah, you and Casey get ready to move on eight nineteen on my command, but stay out of sight until I give the order. We'll get into nine fifteen and lower ourselves onto the balcony of Eight nineteen. When I tell you to move in, get their attention so that we can take them out from behind."

Casey grunted and Sarah muttered "OK", relieved that Ellie had a plan that sounded workable. They got off on the eighth floor and got their pistols ready, Sarah had the Glock in her clutch cocked and loaded, her finger on the trigger, while Casey had a similar Glock ready in the rear of the waistband of his trousers, along with a tranq pistol.

On the ninth floor, Ellie sent one fire team down the fire stairs to the eighth floor, ready to move in on 819 when she gave the order, while she broke into 915 with another fire team. Unfortunately, the room wasn't empty, Alan Watterman was demanding that his wife to get their fucking bags packed so they could get out of there before that maniac from Stanford found him again. Watterman opened his mouth when four black covered figures burst into the room, but before he could shout out, he and his wife were peppered with tranq darts and collapsed to the floor.

The black figures proceeded to the balcony without a second look at the room's occupants, Bry lowering Ellie over the rail by her ankles so she could determine whether they could get onto the balcony below without being seen. At her signal, he pulled her back up and they quickly secured lines to the railing to lower themselves down to the inner corners of the balcony. Once they were down, the other two pulled the lines back up and readied their weapons, then Ellie called for Sarah and the others to move in.

Unfortunately, Malena had apparently left the bright guard watching the door, because he took one look at the beautiful blonde in the evening gown coming down the hall with a big guy in a bartender's outfit and challenged them, because that didn't make any sense at all. To keep the noise down, and because a bright guard may in fact be able to tell them something, Casey grabbed the tranq pistol instead of the Glock and used that to take the man down.

Someone inside started calling out for 'Bob' and Casey signalled Sarah to get down as he called out. "Everything's fine!" and dropped to the floor himself. The lack of the expected hail of bullets was explained when Ellie's voice came over the radio. "The situation's under control, come on in."

When they got inside with 'Bob', the two gorillas were down with half their heads missing, Malena was sporting a few tranq darts and Chuck was untying himself from the remains of the chair. Casey pointed out that having the bright one guarding the room probably meant that there was something of value in there, so they went over it with a fine toothed comb. They found a few things that might had value, but the most interesting items had been concealed on Malena's person.

By the time they finished searching the room, the six from upstairs had brought down the three Brits and removed any trace that they'd been in 915, or the room they had been using. The gorillas had been dragged out onto the balcony to limit the mess to be cleaned up. Anything of interest was removed from the bodies, and Ellie had called for a clean-up crew to get rid of them. While they were searching for evidence, Bry recovered the two 9mm slugs from the suppressed 9mm AS VAL assault rifle he'd used to drop the gorillas so that there was nothing to link them to the scene.

It took them three elevator trips to get them, their five prisoners and all their gear down to the basement where the vans were waiting for them, but they managed to get out unseen, thanks to Jeff and Anna.

* * *

Back at El Castello, the prisoners were either hooded or tranqed as they were taken down to the Dungeons. Diane made a quick call to confirm that the Brits were definitely not part of any officially sanctioned operation on US soil, which meant that they had to go ahead to extract the information of what they were doing here and _why_ they believed that they had authorisation to be there. The way Sarah had been treated meant that nothing was off the table to get the intel out of them, short of death or permanent incapacitation.

The story they told was quite interesting, because the Brits currently had enough plutonium to make a nuclear bomb sitting in their consulate in Los Angles. They were the ones who'd killed the last one in the string of deaths leading to L.A. and swapped the frame on the painting that triggered the Intersect flash, because they didn't want anyone to discover that they had been the ones who created and used the mechanism to smuggle enough weapons grade plutonium into the USA to create a bomb. Even more interesting was the fact that apparently Director Graham had known that British intelligence were following the frame and what was hidden in it onto US soil and had made a highly illegal under the table deal with the Chief of the British SIS to allow the SIS agents to operate on US soil.

The story they got from La Ciudad and her guard was a much simpler one, she was there to obtain the plutonium at the auction, then have the bomb built and sell it at a considerable profit to the buyer she had lined up.

* * *

Now that they had the relevant information, they called the DNI and filled him in. The DNI went to the President to get his indignant confirmation that Graham had _not_ been authorised to make these deals with the British SIS.

With the key parties in agreement, Diane went to Chuck's Special Projects office and Sarah and Casey relocated to Casey's apartment for the official briefing. What Graham didn't know, of course, was that the DNI was also on the link, just waiting to step in, and both Chuck and the President were watching as well. Sarah let Casey lead the briefing.

"Bartowski encountered an individual as he and Walker were going into the function who triggered an Intersect flash. The information in that flash gave a high degree of confidence that the individual might in fact be La Ciudad, so he and Walker agreed that the only way of determining whether it was, in fact, La Ciudad was for Walker to engage him."

Sarah cut in here. "I engaged the individual, but he seemed to recognise who I was, and his men managed to approach me while I was talking to him, so I was removed from the function room at gunpoint. They supposedly took me to the roof to question me, but I believe that their intention may have been to rape me, because the one who searched me spend much of the time fumbling inside my underwear while the one holding me groped me. Casey arrived before they could go too far and identified himself as a federal agent, telling them to put down their weapons, but the man in charge insisted that he was interfering with an authorised operation and would be in serious trouble if he didn't leave. That was when our support team arrived and subdued them."

Graham shouted over her. "Support team? What support team?"

Diane glanced at him dismissively. "Did you think I was going to send my team into a situation with so many unknowns without any backup Director? Please continue Agent Walker."

"Yes Ma'am. I asked the one who was in charge what they were there for but he just told me that I wasn't authorised to know that, so we left them with the support team and went back to the function, but Mister Bartowski was gone. Because of the rather limited timeframe and information given to us, we only managed to arrange for two agents to be at the event with the Intersect, so when Casey came to rescue me, Mister Bartowski was left unprotected…."

Casey cut in this time. "Bartowski wanted to come with me to rescue Walker, but I wouldn't let him because I thought it was too dangerous and he'd be safe inside the function, that was an error…."

Diane waved that away. "We can look into that later Agent Casey, but it was the obvious decision to make under the circumstances, you could not just stand by and allow your partner to be taken away at gunpoint by three unknown assailants. For now though, what happened is more important."

Sarah took over again. "Yes Ma'am. We had a tracker on Mister Bartowski and located him on the eighth floor. Our support team got into the room above and used that to access the balcony of the room where he was being held. Agent Casey and I caused a disturbance outside and the support team took out the assailants in the room while they were distracted. When Mister Bartowski was freed, he told us that the woman was actually La Ciudad. He also told us how he had been taken…."

"He apparently decided to have another look at the painting that caused the original Intersect flash that led us to the auction to take his mind off worrying about Agent Casey and myself, and he discovered that the frame had been changed since the photo was taken. When he concentrated on the frame, he had another flash that told him that the original frame was something that had been created by British Intelligence to allow weapons grade plutonium to be smuggled past all the usual checks, because valuable artworks were spared intrusive and potentially damaging inspections. While he was getting this information, the woman who later turned out to be La Ciudad began talking to him and asked him to dance when the tango started. Mister Bartowski realised that it would be suspicious to deny a beautiful woman a dance when he was standing there alone, so he agreed. As the dance finished, a distinctive scar on La Ciudad's neck was uncovered and he had another flash which identified her as La Ciudad. Mister Bartowski tried to keep her there, talking, until Agent Casey and I returned, but he was accosted and verbally abused by one of Bryce Larkin's friends from Stanford and outed as being Bartowski, rather than Carmichael as we used as his identity for the event."

"This made La Ciudad suspicious and she had her men bring Mister Bartowski back to her room to question him. He managed to convince her that he was just a computer repairman who had pretended to be someone else to get me to go with him, but then she decided to dispose of him and her men were about to throw him off the balcony when we took them down."

She looked at Casey and he took over. "We called for a clean up of the room and the bodies of the guards that were killed when we breached and extracted Bartowski and the prisoners. When we questioned them, it turned out that the reason that La Ciudad had come up in the original Intersect flash was that she was the intended buyer for the plutonium, and the British SIS agent came up in connection with La Ciudad because they had set the operation up to capture La Ciudad. Apparently, Director Graham was aware of because he had reportedly made an agreement with the Chief of the British SIS to allow them to smuggle the plutonium into the United States and operate on US soil."

This was Diane's cue. " _ **What?**_ Graham, did you set my team up as bait in an operation you were part of, giving them no information to work with?"

Graham glared at her, he so wanted to cut this little bitch down to size but he had to be careful, this had blown up in his face far more than he could have believed possible. "I was made aware that something was coming in that was related to La Ciudad and it presented an opportunity to test the value of your Intersect, as you have refused to allow any tests to confirm whether or not we can rely on him to access information when needed, or whether the initial event was a fluke that he could not repeat."

* * *

The glare she directed at him didn't need to be faked, so she snapped. "Let's see what the DNI thinks about that!" as she grabbed the phone. It didn't take long to be put through to him and she repeated to him what had been said before giving him the details needed to get into the video conference. After a suitable delay, he hit the key to enable two way access and started demanding answers from Graham.

As he started to wind down, Graham thought that he'd dodged a bullet and that the old fool had missed the point about the agreement to allow the SIS to operate in the USA, so he was caught out when he was suddenly hit with. "What are these agreements you made Director Graham, and who authorised you to make them?"

Shit, he had to get onto the Chief and make sure that their stories matched in case they took this up with the British PM, but for now he had to cover this up. "I don't know whether Agent Casey made this up or the British agent just said that to stop the illegal interrogation he was being subjected to sir, but that is incorrect."

"What do you mean by illegal interrogation Director Graham?"

"Agent Casey advised us that this was given up in the interrogation of allied intelligence agents, who under pre-existing agreements are authorised to operate within the bounds of the United States."

" _ **What**_ pre-existing agreements Director? I have not been made aware of anything of this nature by you _or_ the President!"

"It is a gentlemen's agreement between the Director of Central Intelligence and the Chief of the British SIS sir, to allow our agents to pursue assignments into each other's countries if required."

"Leaving aside the fact that a gentlemen's agreement would by definition require that gentlemen make it, why was I not advised of this agreement when I assumed the role of the Director of National Intelligence for the United States? For that matter, has the President approved this agreement?"

"It must have slipped my mind, sorry Sir. As for the President, I did not believe that it was of sufficient import to bother him with."

"It slipped your mind in the year since you became the DCI that you made an agreement with a foreign power to allow foreign agents to operate on US soil? If that's so Director, I have to wonder whether it's time for you to retire! You have overstepped your authority more than once in this matter. Firstly, you never had the authority to make any agreements of this nature without the President's approval, and I expect that he will be asking the British PM whether his Chief of the SIS had his approval to authorise our agents to operate on British soil either. Secondly, you know full well that it was your duty to advise me of any and all agreements and alliances with foreign powers when I became the Director of National Intelligence, and that this is not the only thing that you've withheld from me. I will be having you investigated to determine what other critical intel you have been keeping from me Director and you better hope that I don't find anything more serious than this!"

"Quite aside from making agreements that you had no authority to make, you _also_ failed in your duty to inform me that there was a foreign intelligence operation entering the USA, and you have accused General Beckman's most trusted agent of fabricating reports about you. No, I didn't miss that Director, it just wasn't the primary issue to be addressed. _Then_ we had the matter of how Agent Walker was sexually assaulted by these individuals when they had her and how they responded to Agent Casey. And the matter of murdering someone who was potentially a US citizen on US soil. Even if these agents are in fact legitimate British SIS agents who mistakenly believed that they had the authority to operate here, the murder and sexual assault of US citizens on US soil is something that I can assure you will never be condoned, and nor will refusing to comply and put down their arms when ordered to do so by someone who has officially identified himself as a US Federal Agent. So on the evidence presented, there was nothing to indicate that these men were anything but common criminals, or perhaps rogue agents trying to muscle into a nuclear arms deal. I would not have faulted General Beckman's team if they had killed them to deal with the armed threat that they presented, and there was nothing illegal in interrogating them to extract the information that they refused to offer up when questioned on the scene."

"Now, where's this plutonium that they brought onto US soil, I don't want _that_ laying around for someone to make a bomb out of!"

Sarah glanced at Casey and he responded. "They gave that up in the interrogation as well Sir, it's currently inside the British Consulate here in Los Angeles. I expect that it will require a political solution rather than a tactical one to get our hands on it."

The DNI snorted. "Yes, Agent Casey, I believe that you are correct in that, I will add that to the list of matters for the President to take up with the British Prime Minister. Now, to the only positive aspect of this operation, you actually managed to capture La Ciudad?"

Casey nodded. "Yes Sir. When we questioned her, she advised that she was actually here to obtain the plutonium, which she intended to use to build a bomb and sell for a hefty profit. She already had a domestic terrorist lined up to buy the bomb so she would not have any need to get it back over our borders. We've passed the information to the FBI for them to round up the team that were building the bomb and the buyers. We've also handed La Ciudad and the guard we captured alive over to them."

"Very good! What about the foreign agents?"

"They're in FBI custody here in L.A. Sir."

"Good, I'll have the President include handing them over to the Brits when they hand over the plutonium. They'll be banned from ever entering US soil again, if they try they'll spend the rest of their lives in one of our black sites."

Graham spoke up. "Sir, I must protest, La Ciudad was captured as a result of a CIA operation, we should be getting her!"

The DNI's expression was grim as he answered. "If I were you I'd keep my mouth shut Director Graham. For a start, this wasn't a CIA operation, it was a Human Intersect operation that you engaged under false pretexts. Without my authorisation, you decided to conduct a test of a critical intelligence asset that almost got that asset killed, and almost got a federal agent raped..."

Graham cut him off. "I hardly think that Agent Walker was in any risk of being raped Sir…."

The DNI in turn cut _him_ off. "Agent Walker, I'm sorry to ask you this, but do we have any evidence that we can present on that matter? Please understand that I am not questioning your account in any way, but obviously some others will."

Sarah glared at Graham's image before answering the DNI. "I understand Sir. The one who 'searched' me spent so much time fumbling around over and under my underwear that there should be a good chance of recovering at least partial if not full fingerprints from it. For that matter, the one who was holding me while he did that was also groping at my breasts, so we may be able to recover partial or full fingerprints from him on my dress as well. The one in charge didn't touch me, but he basically encouraged the other two while they were doing it."

"Thank you Agent Walker, if you can deliver those garments to the FBI, I will make the necessary testing to see whether we can recover any fingerprints from them a priority, they can fingerprint the two men while they have them in custody to check for matches."

"Thank you Sir."

* * *

He just nodded and addressed Graham again. "So, Director Graham, what you will get for the fees being charged for this operation was exactly what you said you were looking for, confirmation that we can rely on the Human Intersect to deliver the information needed in an operation. Mister Bartowski certainly proved that in this operation."

"Fees? What fees are you talking about Sir?"

The DNI just looked at him for about thirty seconds. "Didn't you read the documentation provided on the terms for engaging the Human Intersect team for an operation Director?"

"I scanned it, my staff are going through it in depth Sir."

"Perhaps you should have done that yourself Director. As the Human Intersect team is outside of the existing agencies, it does not have an ongoing operational budget, therefore the President and I have approved the proposed fee structure for their engagement to fund their ongoing operations. The initial engagement fee is a hundred and fifty thousand for physical operations and fifty thousand for purely information processing. Additional fees are thirty thousand per day or part thereof for physical and ten thousand per day or part thereof for information operations, plus any expenses that are accrued. On top of this there is a penalty of a hundred thousand for each individual incident where team members are put at risk because known information was withheld from them. Were there any significant additional expenses accrued on this operation agents?"

Sarah and Casey looked at each other and tried to hide their grins as Casey answered. "Well we had to spend thirty thousand to get the limo and another four thousand for Bartowski's dinner suit in time, but we can use them for future operations, so not really Sir."

The DNI nodded. "Thank you Agent Casey. By my calculations then Director Graham, this test that you decided to conduct without consulting me will cost the CIA three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, two hundred thousand of that being the penalty fines for putting members of the Human Intersect Team at risk by withholding information. Oh, and I would advise against holding up the payment for this operation, because the President and I also approved the late payment penalty clause of five percent of the total per day, accruing from a month after the invoice was submitted. You must have some business majors in your people General, we never saw that in government contracts of this nature before."

Diane had a hard time keeping a straight face as she answered. "Yes Sir."

Graham was furious, whoever failed to tell him about this was going to pay, but he had no intention of paying this! "Sir, you can't expect me to authorise the payment of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a simple test when I was not aware of these fees!"

The DNI was making him reconsider the determination that he was no more than a worn out old politician as he looked at him with more than a little steel in his eye. "I most certainly _do_ expect the fees that were laid out in the documentation supplied to you and accrued for the operation that you engaged the Human Intersect Team for to be paid Director Graham, including the penalties for putting at least two of the team at risk through deliberately withholding significant information from them. If you continue to argue about this, I may well reconsider my decision not to include Agent Casey in those penalties, as he was facing three foreign agents who refused to drop their weapons until forced to by the arrival of their support team. What's it to be Director Graham, will you be paying this invoice when you receive it today, or will I be having the President authorise the immediate transfer of _four_ hundred and fifty thousand from the CIA budgets to the Human Intersect Team?"

Graham gritted his teeth. "The invoice will be paid when it arrives Sir."

"Good, we will discuss the matter of these agreements you've made after the President has raised the matter with the Prime Minister, and we better not find out anything else that you've... _forgotten_ to tell us about director."

He smiled to himself at the flash of worry that briefly appeared in Graham's eye, as a note from the President had just appeared to say that the Prime Minister had not been informed of any of this either, and he had already called the Chief of the SIS to his office. It was obvious Graham wanted to get away to make sure that the Chief of the SIS told the same story he had, so he insisted on going through the operation step by step to pull apart what had gone wrong, he even managed to spend over ten minutes questioning Graham about why he had supplied Agent Walker with an eye catching red dress when she had specifically requested an understated black dress. The way that Graham was fuming about being dressed down in front of Beckman, let alone Agents Walker and Casey, was just icing on the cake for the DNI.

The others could see what he was doing, and as he was winding down Casey raised another matter they wanted on record. "Sir, while you're here, could I raise a matter that Walker and I have been discussing?"

"Yes, of course Agent Casey."

"It's Bartowski Sir. This whole operation is based around him and the majority of the workload is his. As was proven on this mission, he's in as much danger as Walker and myself, if not more, on field missions but as an asset he isn't getting anything for this. Walker and I believe that Bartowski will be better motivated to make an effort if he's being fairly compensated for his contribution and feels part of the team, so we were thinking that this would be justification for making him a high level field analyst."

Graham started to say that that was ridiculous but the DNI told him to be quiet before turning to Diane.

"General, what are your thoughts on this? I must say that I believe that the Agents have a point."

Diane pretended to ponder this as she nodded. "Yes, I agree Sir. An asset is not normally put on the payroll, but they are not normally a core part of the operation either. As Agent Casey said, this operation is built around Mister Bartowski and depends on him for much of its output, he should have the status and compensation that reflects that."

"Good! Send up the paperwork to have Mister Bartowski added to the team as the highest grade field analyst and I'll get the approvals through. Agent Casey, Agent Walker, thank you for raising this matter, it will be good for the team."

They had a laugh afterwards about the fact that Chuck's field analyst role had gotten a considerable promotion and pay rise when the DNI specified that it was to be the _highest_ grade. They weren't about to argue with the one that Diane reported to, so Chuck got a raise.

* * *

By the time Graham managed to get out of the meeting, the Chief of the SIS was in the Prime Minister's office, so he couldn't get him. Luckily for Graham, the man was adept enough at covering his own arse to swear that he had not been informed that they were actually smuggling plutonium into the United States as part of this operation, and used a similar argument to Graham about the pre-existing bilateral agreement for the two side's agents to operate in each other's countries.

The man, like Graham, was informed that he was not authorised to make any agreements of that nature and that they were thereby cancelled. He was also informed that if his three agents ever set foot on US soil again they'd be in a US black site for the rest of their lives, and ordered to take them all off active duty and put them under house arrest until the charges had been investigated as their actions had embarrassed Britain for the last time.

The three agents were handed over to the British Consulate in Los Angeles in exchange for the plutonium that they had stashed there. The resident Consol-General there was also handed the documentation of the evidence of the charges for murder, smuggling plutonium into the United States, sexual assault and attacking US Federal Agents in the pursuit of their duties that would be applied to the three men if they ever set foot on US soil again. He hadn't been at all impressed that he was required to formally apologise on behalf of the British government to Sarah personally, as well as to the officials there to take possession of the plutonium, for the actions of the men who had been in the employ of the British government at the time of these actions being committed.

The President had actually avoided being heavy handed in this matter and had allowed the Prime Minister to handle things on his side as he saw fit. He _was_ happy to have a trump card that he'd be able to use the next time he wanted something from the Brits though.

Graham made sure that the invoice was paid immediately when Diane had it sent to him personally within half an hour of getting out of the meeting, then he fired everyone who had been looking over the documentation for engaging the Human Intersect Team, effective immediately. He was kicking himself for not picking that up, because there was an advice right at the start that stated that, as the Intersect team didn't have an ongoing operations budget, fees would be charged for any and all engagements to fund their operations.

The actual fee structure was exactly what the DNI had stated, but there also were additional penalties defined of fifty thousand per incident for purely informational engagements if ongoing operational risks or problems were accrued as a result of known information being withheld that related to the engagement. Damn, that Beckman bitch and her people had locked this down!

Graham had to admit a grudging respect for the way they'd tied this up, but he told Bentley and everyone else that they were forbidden from engaging the Intersect Team without his explicit approval. Yeah, they were far better than anything he had available, but he was damned if he was going to let Beckman take his best agent off of him and then throw his budget at her for the privilege of solving the big issues.

 **A/N: A bit shorter, but this was a logical place to leave this one.**


	10. Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend

**Sorry for the delay, been getting distracted with reading stories, watching shows and trying to get myself motivated to write.**

 **Usual disclaimers, no rights to any characters portrayed and this is neither the real world nor a Disney Princess tale.**

While Graham was determined that the CIA was _not_ going to engage the Human Intersect team unless there was no other viable option to pull off a mission, he wasn't adverse to pointing others their way to get them sent on dangerous missions, and the DEA provided him with the perfect opportunity. They had word that a drug trafficker that Carina had been working on bringing down before she was transferred, Peyman Alahi, had been engaged to broker a major arms deal for the warlords in the Golden Crescent who used Alahi to move their opium and heroine into the United States and distribute it. Alahi was currently holding a diamond worth well over twenty million to pay for a major purchase of surface to air missiles and other heavy weapons, the Nadan-I-Noor.

The people Graham was in cahoots with in the DEA desperately wanted the Nadan-I-Noor, but they knew that they couldn't admit _that_ to Beckman, who reported straight to the DNI, so they engaged the Human Intersect team on the basis of the urgent need to get that diamond away from Alahi to prevent him from being able to pay for the missiles etc and therefore stop the arms deal, as those missiles would definitely be used against the United States and other allied forces in the region. They also added a secondary requirement to capture Alahi if possible. While the information that the DEA had on Alahi's regular guards and security systems was given to Beckman, the information about the extra twenty ex-special operations mercenaries and the specific security systems added specifically to protect the Nadan-I-Noor while Alahi was holding it were not.

Carina confirmed most of the information that the DEA had supplied, and Chuck, Jeff and Anna dug the evidence that supported the information that Alahi was handling a very large arms deal on behalf of the drug funded warlords he dealt with out of the DEA's systems. They were amused to see that the only reason the DEA had this Intel was because Alahi had been shooting his mouth off to some women, trying to impress them with stories about how important he was. While they were in the DEA's systems they also dug out the details of the special security detail that had been added to protect the Nadan-I-Noor and needless to say, they weren't at all happy with the DEA for withholding that information when they got that proof _from_ the DEA's systems.

Diane sent Vincent, Rick, Eyal and Mike again to extend the tactical support being provided by Bry, Ellie, Anna and Zondra to give them a better chance against those mercs. She also made a point of directly asking the DEA whether they had any intel about any other security measures that may have been added specifically to protect the diamond. Of course she recorded their response when they said that there wasn't, so she would have them over a barrel when they tried to argue against paying the penalties for placing the team in danger, the only question there was how many instances of the penalty they were going to be hit with. Part of that discussion also involved getting verbal confirmation was that they understood that they would be paying for the Human Intersect team's services, to shut down any more arguments like Graham's.

Carina still had enough contacts in the right circles to get her, Sarah and Chuck into the perpetual pool party that Alahi had going, because the little troll got his jollies off by ogling beautiful women (and men) wearing as little as possible. While she was organising that, Chuck, Jeff and Anna were putting together as much intel as they could about the security systems in Alahi's compound in Malibu, but they were worried when they saw that quite a bit of those security systems were apparently separated from the rest of the systems, which would make it much harder to get in and take control of them. Casey and the others were getting the equipment ready for the mission.

Most of the team would be going in in their two mission vans, they had lightweight composite armour that could handle fifty cal fire at close range (though the epaper camouflage didn't survive taking fire well, and portions of it generally needed to be replaced when it was hit), while a small, efficient, powerful motor supplied the batteries which in turn fed the four in-wheel electric motors. The wide range active suspension provided good handling both on and off-road, while the new tweels from Michelin had extendible paddles to provide grip on loose surfaces, and were disguised to look like normal tyres. Inside, flat screens were mounted on the walls and up to four people could work independently with lap desks (fancy trays with computer keyboards and the like) at once. The seating in the back folded up to the walls down either side to allow the vans to carry cargo and various modules could also be locked in place quickly and securely.

These vans were the end result of a long project that Stephen had been working on and they were pretty much the ultimate in command and transport vehicles, given the technology available. For that matter Chuck, Jeff and Anna had to work with Stephen to help _create_ the technology needed to tie the concepts being used together and make them work. The e-camouflage meant that they could use the vans as their work vans, then change their appearance for missions. Their active suspension, light weight, 4WD and stealth capabilities meant that they were especially effective for missions like this, where the most direct and open access into Alahi's compound was from the beach in front of it.

The tactical and technical support team would slip onto the beach in silent electric mode and use the ecamouflage to (hopefully) escape notice. Meanwhile, Casey would bring Carina, Sarah and Chuck in via the main entrance in the Towncar that they picked up for the art auction. Given the fact that lightweight throw over dresses Carina and Sarah were wearing over their bikinis had no pockets and they might have to take off those dresses in front of others at the party, they had to go in with no weapons other than the knives hidden in their shoes. Chuck was marginally better off, in that the loose, lightweight summer suit he was wearing over his board shorts had pockets and was designed to carry a Stechkin silent revolver and Glock 29 without detection in both the jacket and pants pockets, so he would be carrying the weapons for the three of them inside. Casey would have an AS VAL suppressed assault rifle, a pair of Glock 20s and a silent revolver with him in the Towncar, but he wouldn't be able to come into the party.

* * *

On the day, they had no trouble getting in with the invites that Carina had wrangled, and they managed to slip away long enough to surreptitiously clip wireless remote access devices to the security and computer network wiring to give Jeff and Anna a way into the systems. Between the internal security cameras, satellite imagery and their own cameras, they guided the two vans in close to the access path from the beach to the compound without anyone spotting them, and set the e-camouflage to blend the vans into the background and reduce the chance of them being discovered. Once they were in place and covered, Jeff and Anna concentrated on getting into the compound's systems and trying to locate where the diamond was being held.

While Jeff and Anna were doing their thing, Chuck, Sarah and Carina were circulating at the party, trying to pick up what titbits they could. The girls stayed close to Chuck and used the story that they were there with their brother to ward off the more aggressive guys who were trying to crack onto them. Carina had warned Sarah about Alahi himself before they got there, so they kept an eye out for him and subtly moved away whenever he got closer, because the disgusting little troll was worse than the rest of those bastards there.

They'd been there for over twenty minutes before Anna called to tell them that they were fairly confident that they'd located the diamond and directed them to it. As they slipped away to head there, she explained that the reason they were sure it was there was that it was an area with a lot of security around it, but nothing was showing for inside it, which almost certainly meant that there was a separate security system in place there.

Jeff got them through the nearest door to where they thought the diamond was while he and Anna tried to prevent the security system or cameras showing that they were there. Once they were inside, it didn't take them long to find the sealed display room where they could see the diamond through the glass. Chuck quickly got behind the access panel to clip another remote access device to the wiring so that Jeff and Anna could disable the alarms and monitoring and give them access.

As soon as they were in, they headed straight to the diamond, because if they could grab it and run they would have fulfilled the primary objective of the mission, and they would happily leave the DEA to round up Alahi for themselves. Sarah and Carina were worried about how intense Chuck was as he searched for wiring or even some indication of what the security controls for the diamond itself were, and they dropped the ball on keeping watch for anyone else approaching because they were concentrating on him.

That unfortunately meant that they were all taken by surprise when they heard the sound of rounds being chambered behind them. When they turned around, it took all of their acting ability to hold in their disgust at the sight in front of them. Alahi was standing there with what were obviously two of the 'special' guards, going by their gear, military manner and the MP5Ks that they were holding as if they knew what to do to them, but it was Alahi who turned their stomachs.

He was almost naked, but he wasn't uncovered, because he was so hairy he looked like a scrawny chimp in a tiny bikini bottom standing there in front of them. What was hard to comprehend was that he was obviously oblivious to how ugly and stomach turning the image he presented was, because _he_ obviously thought that he, and the way he was leering at the girls was attractive.

While he was trying to process this, and settle his stomach, Chuck surreptitiously checked for the cameras in the display area that must have given them away. He could only find one, and when he caught Sarah and Carina's eyes they nodded infinitesimally in agreement. It looked as though they might have caught a break there at least because that camera was pointed at the diamond, so it must have only picked them up when they were walking around the diamond, looking at it and the pedestal it was mounted on. By Chuck's calculations, he, Sarah and Carina were out of range of the camera at the moment, and so were the monkey and his guards. That might give them a chance to deal with the situation without the rest of the security force coming running.

They were thankful for Alahi's ridiculously overblown ego actually, because when he launched into what he obviously thought was a charming banter and Sarah engaged him, it took the guards' attention off them enough for them to prepare to take them down.

Alahi started with. "You shouldn't be in here you know." and Sarah countered with a ditzy valley girl. "But the room was open, and we saw all these pretty things in here." She finished with a wave at the Nadan-I-Noor.

That encouraged Alahi and he grinned at her. "You like my diamond do you?"

"Really? This is _your_ diamond? Oh yeah, it's really pretty!"

"And who are you lovely ladies?"

Sarah flashed a look at Chuck and Carina and got the signal that they were ready, because Carina had slipped the Silent Revolver out of Chuck's pants pocket while Alahi and the guards were distracted by Sarah's bubbly valley girl act and jiggly bits as she was bouncing with excitement. "I'm Suzie…." Carina picked it up there as she rested her hand on Chuck's back. "And I'm Hope, and this is our little brother Bobbie! And who are you? Some friends gave us invites to the party, but they never told us who lived here?"

Alahi grinned, lapping it up. "Pretty girls call me Peyman…."

Sarah beamed at him. "Hi Peyman!" As she said that, Carina whipped the Silent Revolver out from where she whad been hiding it behind Chuck's back and put a bullet between the eyes of both of the guards, before bringing the revolver to bear on Alahi's face and holding a finger to her lips and saying "Hi Peyman!" in the same tone Sarah had. Chuck quickly pulled the other Silent Revolver from the hidden holster in the jacket and handed it to Sarah before she moved to where Alahi and the guards were, dragging the guards' bodies out of sight from the door as she kept up the banter. "I guess a humongous diamond like that must have quite a story, huh Peyman?"

When he didn't respond, she went up to him and jammed the revolver in his side, so he squeaked out.

"Yes, they say that he who holds the Nadan-I-Noor can rule the world." in fear. He was almost wetting himself and his words sounded obviously strained, so Sarah had to try and cover up in case there were microphones in there as well. Laughing breathlessly, she gasped out. "Oh Peyman, stop that! I hardly know you!"

She was hoping that anyone who knew Alahi who heard that would presume that he was getting off from taking advantage of the situation to ogle and grope the women they'd found in the display room like he usually did, that was after all why he hosted this perpetual pool party. The security people would be wanting to get down there to determine why the hell the display room door might have been open when all the indicators were showing that the display room was properly sealed. The problem with that was that while Alahi was nothing but a joke, a retarded monkey, the Warlords who set him up here to oversee shipping their product into the United States because they were related to him weren't, so they'd have to wait until he'd finished playing with the stupid party girls who'd wandered in there to do their jobs.

Even the head of security, who the other warlords who _weren't_ related to Alahi had insisted be there to ensure that everything was handled properly and safeguard their interests, didn't have the power to override the retarded monkey, so they had to just wait for him to finish playing and leave, as soon as they saw him leave they'd move in.

Of course, anyone who might have heard what Sarah said would have missed the real message in her eyes as she looked at Alahi over the sights of the Silent Revolver in her hand, but even someone as stupid as Alahi had no trouble deciphering that message. 'Say or do anything I don't like and you're dead!'

While the girls were watching Alahi and the door and stripping the weapons and gear from the two dead guards, Chuck was trying to determine what controls there were in place on the diamond. The fact that the camera was focussed on the diamond complicated things as it meant that he couldn't get too close, but he'd picked up on something just before Alahi and the dead guards arrived that had triggered an Intersect flash, and he knew that they were pumping heat through the diamond as both an alarm and anti-theft device. Grabbing that diamond would burn your skin off, and as soon as the heat transfer was cut off, something else was bound to be triggered. What that was he didn't know, but he was sure that it wouldn't be good for them.

Looking around the room, he spied a fire extinguisher which should be able to blow the diamond out of its mounting, and an ancient Persian bowl lined with one of the dead guard's shirt to cushion the impact should do the job of catching it quite well. When they were ready, Chuck had Sarah hold Alahi over by the door because he was certain that something would go wrong, while Carina had the fire extinguisher.

As he'd expected, as soon as the diamond left the setting, alarms went off and the door starting coming down. Sarah did as Chuck asked and ducked out the door, dragging Alahi with her, while Carina kicked over a pedestal near the door, smashing an almost certainly priceless bust in the process but successfully stopping the door from closing. When Chuck gave her a nudge towards the door, she got a run up and did a picture perfect little league slide under the door, the bowl with the diamond in it coming out at the same moment. Chuck's slide was hampered by the fact that he was bigger and therefore caught himself on the door as he went under it, but he still got out OK.

By the time he touched the diamond, it was cool enough to pick up, so he stuffed it into the pouch they'd brought for the purpose and put it in his pocket. With that, they shoved Alahi out the door and called for Jeff to lock it down and then keep it locked to slow any pursuers coming from inside the mansion, because the security force would have been on their way as soon as the alarms went off. They were hoping that the guards would head straight through the mansion to the display room, so that they could use that locked door to hold them up.

Casey was waiting outside with a pile of dead guards when they came out, he handed the AS VAL to Chuck and slung Alahi over his shoulder, taking off at a run with Chuck, Sarah and Carina on his heels. Ellie, Bry, Vincent, Rick, Eyal and Mike were providing covering fire and they were dropping the guards who came running with the suppressed assault rifles as soon as they showed to keep things quiet as long as possible.

As soon as Casey and the others were down the path to the beach, the others started falling back as well, and none of the guards from the compound had shown up down there by the time the two vans left the beach. Alahi had been strapped in place with his hands secured, a gag in his mouth and a hood over his head before the others removed their masks, but even though they stuck earplugs in his ears, they didn't trust the little troll enough to talk in front of him. Luckily, they had already planned out exactly what they were going to do with him and the diamond before they went anywhere near his compound, which was why they were currently heading for LAX.

At LAX, they had the paperwork and government credentials to smooth the way to take one of the vans in to the waiting C-21A jet transport. Once they were on their way to D.C. the rest of them went back to Pasadena to report the results of the mission to Diane. There would be another briefing with the DEA representative who had engaged them in the morning, but this was to go over all the details.

* * *

Chuck had checked the faces of as many of the guards as he could, and the Intersect managed to supply details for two thirds of the two dozen dead guards. This was part of the evidence to support the charge that the DEA had put them in danger by deliberately withholding the intel about the twenty ex-special ops operatives who had been added to the security force and the additional security systems that had been added as well.

They were having a good laugh when they agreed that the bill for this operation would be five hundred and twenty thousand. This was made up of the hundred and fifty thousand engagement fee, plus another thirty thousand for a second day or part thereof, thirty thousand to replace the Towncar that Casey had to leave behind when he came to assist their escape, ten thousand to cover the cost of the support staff flying to and fro between L.A. and Washington, and three instances of the hundred thousand penalty for putting the three active members of the Human Intersect team on that mission at risk by withholding the intel about all the extra security that had been added for the diamond.

Diane had a Blackhawk waiting when the C-21A set down at Ronald Reagan Airport, and the four agents, Alahi and the Nadan-I-Noor were being secured in Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling ten minutes later.

At the DEA's insistence, Sarah and Casey had to be up for a video-conference with Washington at 0600 L.A. time. The DEA's representative waved off the issues caused by the additional security systems and ex-special ops guards that the team hadn't been told about, he just wanted to know whether they got the diamond. His happiness at being told that they indeed had both the Nadan-I-Noor and Peyman Alahi was short lived though, because Diane cut him off when he said he'd be right over to take delivery.

"Mister Alahi can be released to you as soon as you provide the necessary paperwork, but when my people were gathering the necessary intel for this mission, they discovered that the Nadan-I-Noor had been stolen from its rightful owners nearly eighty years ago. When I discussed this with the Director of National Intelligence, he took the matter to the President to get a ruling on what should be done with the diamond, and the President has directed that the Indian government has the strongest claim to the diamond, so State Department will be returning the diamond to them in a formal ceremony."

"You, you can't do that! We engaged you to retrieve that diamond for the DEA! Without the diamond, you have failed the mission and the contract we made with you!"

Diane didn't bother trying to hide her amusement. "If you care to check your copy of the paperwork for this engagement Mister Johnson, you will find that the agreement specified that we prevent Peyman Alahi from using the Nadan-I-Noor to buy a large amount of missiles and other armaments. The secondary objective was to capture Peyman Alahi for the DEA. Therefore the Human Intersect team has achieved both objectives, we have recovered the Nadan-I-Noor to prevent its being used to fund the arms deal, and we have captured Peyman Alahi for the DEA. If you wish to argue about the disposition of the Nadan-I-Noor, you will have to take it up with the President, as it was his decision. With that, this part of the briefing is concluded and we will be moving on to the charges for this mission. As you know, the initial engagement fee was one hundred and fifty thousand, plus thirty thousand more for the second day of the operation and another thirty to replace the Towncar that Agent Casey had to leave behind when he came to assist the other agents' escape, ten thousand to cover the cost of the support staff flying between L.A. and Washington, and three instances of the hundred thousand penalty for putting Human Intersect Team members at risk by deliberately withholding the information that twenty ex-special operations operatives and additional security systems had been added to protect the Nadan-I-Noor while it was in Mister Alahi's possession. That comes to a total of five hundred and twenty thousand for the mission."

Her smile enraged him. "Are you insane woman? The DEA isn't going to pay over half a million dollars when you failed to deliver the prime objective, and we certainly won't be giving in to any attempt to extort three hundred thousand from us on some made up story! We'll be taking _that_ to the Attorney General, see how funny you think it is when you're indicted for attempting to extort a federal government agency Beckman!"

She just looked him in the eye and snapped. "Check your email Mister Johnson! You'll find that we have all the evidence to show that the DEA had the intel on both the extra guards and the additional security systems over a week _before_ you engaged the Human Intersect team _and_ that this intel was accessed from _your_ office at that time! I've also included the information we have unearthed on those ex-special ops guards that my people managed to identify, I am told that these only represent about two thirds of the two dozen combatants they were forced to kill in the fighting to cover our agents' escape. The Attorney General is well aware of the terms and conditions for engaging the Human Intersect team, because the FBI makes use of our services, so by all means do so, I'll be sending a copy of what I sent you to them as proof that the penalties are justified. Those penalties haven't been required to date with the FBI but they are aware of the criteria. I would strongly suggest that you discuss your threat to refuse to pay with CIA Director Graham, as he was recently made aware of what happens to those who try to do that after the Intersect team has delivered the objectives of the engagement by the DNI. Now, do you want Mister Alahi or shall we just hand him over to the FBI? Your verbal advice will be sufficient as we record all communications, something that you would have known if you'd read the terms and conditions for engaging the Human Intersect Team, which you confirmed that you had in the recording of another conversation we had."

He looked furious, but decided to try and call her bluff. "I don't know what you're trying to pull Beckman, but you're not going to get away with it, I'll see to that!"

"I would warn you to be careful about going down this path Mister Johnson, but I can see that you are not inclined to listen, so one last time, will the DEA be officially accepting Peyman Alahi into their custody today, or shall we be turning him over to the FBI?"

He went to shout at her, but stopped himself with an obvious effort and disconnected the link without a word.

Diane looked at the screen as Johnson was replaced by Chuck, Carina and Zondra and smirked. "Well, that was fun! I guess the FBI are getting another high value prisoner to process. So, do we have anything to discuss before I notify the Attorney General and the FBI of what came out of that meeting?"

When they all said 'No' she cut the link and got on with what she had to do with a smile on her face. What Mister Johnson didn't know, because it was way above his pay grade, was that she'd had a good working relationship with the Attorney General for many years now, because the Special Projects Group supplied much of the intel that made the operations of the agencies under the Department of Justice's banner a success, not to mention Chuck and John working with them on many, many missions. While she reported to the Secretary of Defense, and the Director of National Intelligence now, she also had a direct line to the Attorney General to support Law Enforcement issues, so she probably had more pull with the Attorney General than the Administrator of the DEA had and she wasn't at all worried about what someone who reported to the Administrator could do. Having a close relationship with the Secretary of State and handing her a major coup with the return of the Nadan-I-Noor just strengthened her position.

The Director of the FBI was the most powerful person under the Attorney General and she was on good terms with him as well through their long history of working together, and on top of that, they were handing them another prize in Alahi. As much of an idiot as Alahi was, he was in charge of the import and distribution of drugs coming in from the Golden Crescent, so he was bound to have a lot of names and contacts buried in that thick head of his, so handing over Alahi would only improve their standing with the FBI.

Diane was expecting issues to come out of besting the old boys club rather seriously twice in little more than a month, so she had assigned Vincent, Rick, Eyal and Mike to shadow her protection detail for a few days. This was simple enough for her to do as the paperwork had already gone through to have the nine transferred to the Special Projects group after the group showed how well they could work together on the first mission for the Human Intersect team. For now, she was generally seconding them to other groups she worked with or oversaw, but as their commander she could assign them where she wanted.

As usual, she was proven correct a couple of nights later. Johnson had been suspended without pay while an investigation was launched into what he had been trying to pull with the Nadan-I-Noor, and the idiot had thought that the investigation would be dropped and he might keep his job if she disappeared, so he sent a hit team after her. The dozen men who tried to take her as she arrived home were all ex-military with special ops experience and were quite competent, so if she'd only had her regular protection detail there was a good chance that they might have been successful, it was the shadow team that defeated them. While her regular protection detail held them up, the other four hit them from behind and wiped them out. They would have been able to take them in a straight fight as they were at a whole 'nother level to the attackers, but Diane's protective detail certainly helped.

A couple of the attackers lived and their testimony meant that Johnson and some of his buddies who helped him went to black sites for the rest of their lives. That didn't make Diane any more popular than she'd been before, but the rest of them got the message that you have to be stupid to come at Diane Beckman head on, so they faded back into the shadows and tried to destabilise her position through political measures.

 **A/N: Yeah, I know, This is neither as long or as polished as I'd like, but I'm just not _feeling_ this one at the moment, I think I might take a break for a few weeks and see if I can get past the current block that way.**


End file.
